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Rogers, Henry, 1806-1877 | 
A defence of "The eclipse d 

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faith" 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/defenceoftheecli00roge 


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DEF-ENC E* +. 
“THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH,” 


BY ETS, AUTHOR; 


BEING A REJOINDER 'O. PROFESSOR 
NEWMAN'S \WWAREPLY.” 


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ALSO, 


THE “REPLY” TO “THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH,” 
By FRANCIS WILLIAM ve WMAN, 


TOGETHER WITH 


HIS CHAPTER ON “THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS,” 
REPRINTED FROM 


THE THIRD EDITION OF “PHASES OF FAITH.” 


BOSTON: 
CROSBY, NICHOLS, AND COMPANY, 


111 WaAsxrneton Street. 


1854. 


CAMBRIDGE, 


STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY METCALF AND COMPANY. 


INTRODUCTION | 
TO: | 


THE AMERICAN EDITION. 


Srverat editions of the volume entitled “ The 
Eclipse of Faith” have been published and largely 
circulated in this country. With but one or two ex- 
ceptions, and those referable to quarters in which the 
theories so ably assailed in it find more or less indul- 
gence or favor, the criticisms that have been pro- 
nounced upon the work have been highly commenda- 
tory. Those who have perused it attentively have seen ° 
occasion for carefully discriminating the limited design 
of the writer, and for pronouncing upon his success in 
accomplishing it with sole reference to the single aim 
which he had in view, and not according to the per- 
tinency or ability of the book as a complete defence 
of Revealed Religion against all the assaults of Scep- 
ticism. -The author assures us that he endeavored to 
avoid personalities, that he was dealing with a school 
or a clique, and not with individuals, and that, when 
he quoted from the printed volumes of two or three 
prominent writers of that school, it was merely for the 


iv INTRODUCTION. 


sake of convenience, and not to fix a special odium 
upon them. 

Mr. Newman, for reasons which had weight with 
his own mind, regarded “'The Eclipse of Faith” as a 
direct assault upon himself personally, and under that 
opinion he has construed some of its arguments and 
several of its sentences as conveying covert insinua- 
tions more goading and annoying than is anything 
contained in the abstract or impersonal logic of the 
work. With what justice he has so interpreted the 
spirit and the contents of the volume, the readers of it 
may have already decided for themselves; but the fol- 
lowing pages will help them to a more full decision. 
It certainly will be regretted by all those who wish to 
weigh the force of honest and intelligent arguments on 
a subject of the most solemn and momentous interest, 
that so much of the heat of wounded feeling should be 
manifested by both the parties to the issue here pre- 
sented. It is not our office, in these introductory re- 
marks, to put ourselves between the two parties as 
_ Aimpire or judge; if it were so, we should have a very 
emphatic and well-assured opinion to pronounce in 
the case. The judgment of a third party would here 
be obtrusive, and is, of course, withheld. 

Mr. Newman introduced his “ Reply to the Hclipse 
of Faith” into a new edition of his “ Phases of Faith.” 
Besides the specific answers which he makes at length 
to the arguments or objections advanced in the former 
work, he has modified several expressions and senten- 


ces which he had written in his first edition of the 


INTRODUCTION. Vv 


“ Phases of Faith.’ As these modifications are for 
the most part without the range of the matters treated 
in the following pages, the reader is referred to the vol- 
ume itself, which has not been reprinted in this coun- 
try; but may be easily obtained. But in the new 
edition of that volume is found a chapter on “The 
Moral Perfection of Jesus,” which we feel bound to 
pronounce upon as the most offensive, tortuous, and 
unfair piece from the pen of a Christian scholar that 
we have ever encountered. It is with extreme reluc- 
tance, and only with an overruling desire that the 
strangest and most unworthy speculations on sacred 
themes may not claim sympathy on the score of being 
denied liberty of expression, that we have been instru- 
mental in giving to that chapter the extended circula- 
tion of a reprint. The ingenuity and sophistry of 
scepticism never ventured upon a more daring length 
than.in that chapter. The utter absurdity of the pleas 
which the writer there advances will be so trans- 
parently obvious to most readers as to render them 
nugatory of harm, while the Christian believer may be. 
led to realize all anew, and with intenser reverence, 
trust, and love, the graces of that divine character, which 
admits of being assailed indeed, but which turns aside 
every weapon that every form of passion or prejudice 
can direct against it. We have felt under an obliga- 
tion to say this much, because we hold ourselves 
bound to some sort of an apology or excuse before the 
community for submitting to them such speculations as 
they will find in a portion of these pages. The read- 


i 
an 
» 


- 
i * 
ies 


= 


Paks 
vi SA INTRODUCTION. -. 
“6 


ers of “The Eclipse of Faith” have here offered to 
them the “ Reply” to that work, and the “ Defence” of 
it by its author, together with the chapter from Mr. 
Newman’s new edition of his “ Phases of Faith,” on 
“The Moral Perfection of Jesus.” 'The references made 
in each of these separate contents of the following 
pages to the other contents of them have been con- 
formed in the foot-notes to the paging of the reprint. 
The other references are to the new edition of the 
“ Phases of Faith.” 


A REPLY 


“THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH, 


BEING 


CHAPTER IX. OF THE SECOND EDITION 


OF THE 


“PHASES OF FAITH.” 


By F. W. NEWMAN. 


fed Og a 


Tuts small book has encountered, as was to be ex- — 
pected, many attacks. In so far as possible, I have 
answered them in detail by modifying or expanding 
the phrases or paragraphs which have been misunder- 
stood or perverted. Of course we all have a difficulty 
in entering into the minds of one another, and some 
candid critics have greatly misconceived the scope of 
many of my arguments. They allege that I have not 
proved this or that, — which I was not at all trying to 
prove; but which, nevertheless, they fancied 1 ought 
' to be proving, or must have meant to prove. I must 
beg all critics who have candor, to observe what it is 
that I have said; and not expect me at every sentence 
to superadd denials of what it is that Ido not say. I 
cannot possibly foresee what I am in this way to deny 
beforehand. 

So also, when I make a statement of fact concern- 
ing my own mind, I mean it as a fact, and that is all. 
Valeat quantum! For instance: it is to me perfectly 
clear, that the Apostles taught the end of all things to 
be close at hand in their own day; and drew from it 
the conclusion, that it signifies little whether we are 
slaves or freemen, married or unmarried; arid that Pa- 


a 
4 REPLY TO 


triotism, Erudition, and love of Fine Art are highly 
unseasonable for Christians. Now, I see no use in 
saying more than the fact, that so I do understand » 
them ; there are tens of thousands whom I might write 
a hundred pages to convince of this, but it is too disa- 
ereeable for them to believe, and I know they will not 
believe it. But there are others, who, like me, as soon 
it is pointed out to them, find it to pervade the New 
Testament. I always try to make it clear, when I am 
enunciating my judgment, and when I am proving the 
accuracy of that judgment. If critics would point out 
where I have confounded these two things, I should 
‘try to write more clearly. But when they require that 
I shall prove everything to every reader’s comprehen- 
sion, they are practically demanding that every treatise 
against their favorite notions shall be too cumbrous 
and dull to be read. Moreover, if I am discerned by 
any one to be upright, the fact of my holding a partic- 
ular judgment which exposes me to theological con- 
demnation is something to the argument; and it is not 
uninteresting to some persons, however disgusting it 
is, on the contrary, to my hostile critics. Nay, their _ 
disgust is some measure of its importance. 

But there is one very common kind of criticism, — 
indeed, I might say, the staple article of my reviewers 
and assailants,— which consists in demanding proof 
exactly in the place where it is not to be found, and 
ignoring it where it is. A critic of Euclid might thus 
censure the 47th proposition, as most unwarrantably 
assuming — without the shadow of proof, reason, or 
plausibility —a most important element of the argu- 
ment; while the critic quite overlooks that this was 
demonstrated in the 41st. To the reader of their cri- 
tique, their objection appears triumphant: they have 
shown me to be superficial, and a very ridiculous logi- 


““THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 5 


cian. Well! they are safe, I suppose: their readers 
are sufficiently taught to despise or dread my pages. 
In the same spirit does a very supercilious writer in a 
religious journal avow his inability to find in the whole 
of the “ Phases” any description of the groaning and 
travailing of the soul, or any mark of my acquaintance 
with its deeper wants and distresses. He wilfully 
comes to the “ Phases” to find topics treated there, 
concerning which many think there is too much in my 
book on the Soul; and, not finding the object of his 
search, magisterially reports that I have never known 
anything of the inward life of Christianity. 

But there is one book, which, both in reviews and 
in private society, is confidently spoken of as a pow- 
erful refutation of my “Phases”; it is called the 
“ Eclipse of Faith.” For many good reasons, I should 
now pass it by unnoticed, only that its popularity gives 
it a weight which it has not in itself; I find also that 
my friends expect me to answer it. Supposing it to 
be directed against the “ Phases,” I delayed perusing - 
it until I should be preparing a* new edition; but I 
now find its principal attack to be against my treatise 
on the Soul. By far the larger part is unanswerable, 
either because scoffs offer nothing to reply to, or be- 
cause it has purposely omitted my arguments. On 
certain points of detail, however, I have obviated its 
misrepresentations above ; see. pp. 14, 16, 101, and 106 
above. 

Of this _author’s tone the reader may in part judge 
from the following examples : — 

P. 82. “ You shall be permitted to say (what I will 
not contradict) that, though Mr. Newman may be in- 
spired, for aught I know,. . . . inspired as much (say) 
as the inventor of Lucifer matches, — yet that his book 


is not divine, — that it is purely human.” 
l * 


6 REPLY TO 


P, 127. “ Mr. Newman says, to those who say they 
are unconscious of these facts of spiritual pathology 
which he describes in his work on the Soul, that the 
consciousness of the spiritual man is not the less true, 
that [though ?] the unspiritual man is not privy to it; 
and this most devout gentleman somewhere quotes with 
much unction the words, ‘ For the spiritual man judgeth 
all things, but himself is judged of no man.’” 

P. 419. “ Mr. Newman has favored the world with 
his views of religious truth, and the ‘spiritual’ weap- 
ons by which its ‘champion’ is to make it victorious 
over mankind. He has also recorded his hatred of 
slavery and despotism, where such magnanimity ts per- 
fectly safe and perfectly superfluous. Let me now sup- 
pose you, not only partly, but wholly of his mind; and 
animated (if ‘spiritualism’ will ever prompt men to do 
anything except....to write books against book-reve- 
lations),” &c. 

On the rest of this passage, which affects to argue 
against me, I have commented in p. 106, above. . My 
heart does not reproye me for having written a word to 
undervalue the sincere religion of any man. It therefore 
surprises me to find one, who desires to be thought a 
gentleman and a Christian, yet knowing that I believe 
in the doctrine of the Psalms and New ‘Testament con- 
cerning the communication of God’s Spirit, (which 
may be my weakness, but still is sincere,) compares 
my inspiration. to that of the inventor of Lucifer 


~ matches. 


In every church through England, prayer is habitu- 
ally offered to God “to cleanse our hearts by the inspi- 
ration of his Holy Spirit.” Now, what sort of howl 
of horror and disgust would rise against me, if I told 
those who were in sincere piety thus praying, that | 
would freely concede to them, they might possibly get 


‘THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 7 


as much inspiration as the inventor of Lucifer matches? 
Say nothing of the indecency; but, would anybody 
- See wit in such a saying? The author clearly has a 
profound unbelief in the Christian doctrine of Divine 
Influence, or he could not thus grossly insult it. I am 
sorry to add, that, in order to avert the indignation of 
his readers, and pretend it is some conceit and vanity 
of mine which he is ridiculing, he endeavors, in pp. 
10-14, 46, and elsewhere, to instil into the reader, that 
I make exclusive claims of inspiration for my single 
self. I wish I could think that he has sincerely mis- 
taken me. And what sort of reply am I to make to a 
person who tells me that my book is not divine, but 
human? This is what I call a scoff; and his pages 
abound with such. 

He moreover wishes his readers to think that I am 
as flippant as he. Thus he says, p. 119: “ Mr. Parker 
and Mr. Newman make themselves very merry with a 
book-revelation, as they call it’ His -credulous reader 
(who probably has a conscience against opening my 
book) will naturally think this to be true. What kind 
of truth is in it, my reader shall presently see. 

Again, p. 383: “ Mr. Newman says, that Paul seems 
to have rested on evidence, which he received... . in 
a manner which would have moved the laughter of 
Paley.” Ihave no phrase of this color; and I think it 
rather hard that he should put his own merriments. 
into my mouth. 

The very plan on which this author has constructed 
his book is self-condemning as a medium of contro- 
versy. For one man to write both sides of an argu- 
ment, with the express and avowed intention of ridi- 
culing the one side and extolling the other, is such an 
intolerable absurdity, that I am amazed at any fair- 
minded persons entertaining it for a moment. The 


8 REPLY TO 


Socratic dialogue, when used in talk, may possibly 
have a legitimate use to a teacher addressing unculti- 
vated minds; though, even then, the moment it is used 
for controversy, it is the mere screen of infinite sophis- 
tries. But in writing, where one person works both 
the puppets, it is really too puerile. Its diffuseness 
also makes a full exposure of sophisms impossible 
without writing a folio. 

But if this be in itself unjust, it is made ten times 
worse by this author’s peculiar use of the enormous 
license which he has assumed. The second title of 
the book is “ A Visit to a Religious Sceptic”; this is 
_a Mr. Harrington, who is -his principal talker. Into 
his mouth the author puts all the free and easy lan- 
guage which, for some reason or other, he is unwilling 
to say in his own name. _ I think this exceedingly un- 
just to genuine and honest men. I am acquainted 
with several decided sceptics, and two avowed atheists. 
I know them to have read my book on the Sonl, and they 
do not agree with it; but they behave to me with modes- 
ty, respect, and kindness. The very opposite tone per- 
vading this book, I feel to come, not from any actual 
Mr. Harrington, but from the Christian (?) controver- 
sialist behind him. I am willing to meet a sincere 
sceptic, and teach him or learn from him. All sincere 
and conscientious men can teach us something: God 
forbid that I should feel towards such either pride or | 
unkindness ; indeed, I find that true sceptics do not 
scoff at the sincere, but only at the hypocritical. And 
as this dialogue is fundamentally fictitious, I do not 
see what else but the author’s own heart can have 
suggested the profane insults which abound in it, and 
against which I protest, as a slanderous represen- 
tation of honest sceptics. After all, why must this 
author step in to reinforce their argument? are they 


‘6THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 9 


not generally acute enough to conduct it without a 
Christian’s aid? and why must I fight against a sham 
adversary ? It suffices for me to combat honest and 
real hearts, from whom I do not shrink: but I confess 
I do shrink with a most painful repugnance from one, 
who, by discarding his personality, thinks to get free 
from moral responsibility. 

But here is another marvel, — that in this Christian’s 
opinion the great test of spiritual truth lies in its 
preacher being able to recommend it to the profane 
intellect of a lively scoffer! According to him, the 
state of the soul is nothing to the purpose. Unless I 
can convince a hard reasoning and unspiritual man 
that certain Scriptural doctrines (doctrines which he 
elsewhere reproaches me with having “stolen” from 
Christian Apostles) are true, — I am absurd, contempt- 
ible, and deserving of having my language on sacred 
topics mutilated and mocked! My language! No! 
but the language of those whom the author desires 
me to revere. In the following, for instance, Mr. Fel- 
lowes is intended to personate me; and he says, 
p. 41 :— ; 

“¢T have rejected all creeds; and I have found what 
the Scripture calls that peace which passeth all under- 
standing.’ 

“¢T am sure it’ passes mine,’ says Harrington, ‘if 
you have really found it; and I should be much obliged 
to you if you would let me participate in the dis- 
covery.’ , 2 

“<< Yes, said Fellowes; ‘....I have escaped from 
the bondage of the letter, and have been introduced 
into the liberty of the spirit..... We separate the 
dross of Christianity from its fine gold. The letter 
killeth, but the spirit giveth life. The fruit of the 
Spirit is joy, peace, not ; 


10 REPLY TO 


“<¢Upon my word,’ said Harrington, laughing, ‘I 
shall presently begin to fancy that Douce Davie pat a%, 
has turned infidel,” &c. 

I request the ender to consider, whether, if we blot 
out the names Fellowes and Christianity, and put in- 
stead Paul and Judaism, Mr. Harrington’s scoffs would 
not have equal weight. For myself I feel simple 
amazement, that a writer can think he is serving the 
cause of Christianity by appealing to such weapons. 

Observe also his gracious application to me of the 
word “ infidel,’ a contumely very common from Mr. 
Harrington, but impossible from a genuine sceptic, — 
a word which is the peculiar weapon of the proud and 
self-sufficient. dogmatizer, who holds all to be unfaithful 
who do not adopt his opinions. I say, such a word is 
unmeaning from one who is not sure even that there is 
a good God; and this epithet itself proves, that under 
the mask of the sceptic, the Christian (?) is venting his 
own pride and bitterness, which he unjustly attributes 
to another. 

But as to this Mr. Fellowes: who is he? His char- 
acter (p. 33) is apparently intended to be a portrait 
of mine, as the author conceives of me. Thus he in- 
sinuates a mean, degrading, and laughable opinion of 
me, if the reader will accept it; but if the reader can- 
not go quite so far, and says it is unfair, then the au- 
thor can back out, and protest that Fellowes is not 
myself, but only my admirer. The reader will see, 
that, in the last passages quoted, Fellewes is represented 
as blurting out all sorts of sacred truths in a heap, upon 
a man who thinks he has a right to laugh at them. 
This is an old trick for ridiculing all inward religion. | 
Write a farce in which a Dr. Cantwell shall profess 
holy maxims in the most unsuitable moments, and 
you get the laugh of the thoughtless on your side. 


‘STHE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 11 


It is reserved for this author to imagine that by 
such profanity he can succeed in frightening men 
from what he calls « infidelity” into any holy or pure 
religion. 

In depicting Mr. Fellowes, the author is resolved to 
outdo Plato in graphic pungency. He is most exact. 
in describing his sanctimonious solemnity, his silly 
dogmatism, his eager confidence, his grave puzzlehead- 
edness, his hesitation, his drawl, his long pauses, his 
blank look, and his eminent candor in confessing my 
follies. In far more than I can possibly quote, or al- 
lude to, the animus .of the author is seen. In the last 
quotation, it is visible at a glance that the author is 
working the puppet Fellowes expressly to ridicule me 
and my argument, and not as one who tries to say his 
best for me, as he thinks I would have said it. Let 
the reader mark the following, pp. 45, 46. Harrington 
says: — 

“ ¢ Tcannot suspect you of hypocrisy, but I confess I 
Tegard your language as cant. As I listen to you, I 
seem to see a hybrid between Prynne and Voltaire. 
So far from its being true that you have renounced the 
letter of the Bible and retained its spirit, I think it 
would be much more correct to say, comparing your 
infidel hypothesis with your most spiritual dialect, that 
you have renounced the spirit of the Bible and retained 
its letter.’ 

“¢ But are you in a condition to give an Opinion ?? 
said Fellowes, with a serious air. ‘Mr. Newman says 
in a like case, “ The natural man discerneth not the 
things of the Spirit of God, because they are foolish- 
ness unto him”: it is “the spiritual man only who 
searches the deep things of God.” At the same time I 
freely acknowledge that I never could see my way 
clear to employ an argument which looks so arrogant ; 


12 REPLY TO 


and the less, as I believe with Mr. Parker, that the only 
true revelation is in all men alike.’ ” 

I will not here farther insist on the monstrosity of 
bringing forward St. Paul’s words as mine, in order to 
pour contempt upon them; a monstrosity which no 
sophistry of Mr. Harrington can justify. But I now 
point to the fact, that Mr. Fellowes is purposely em- 
ployed to make damaging concessions; so that the 
whole is a prevarication from beginning to end. More- 
over, the author deliberately shows his belief, that the 
profane scoffer ts competent to judge of ce spiritual 
questions. 

But Icome to a matter still eraver; namely, that 
not a word which Mr. Harrington says concerning 
my opinions or arguments is trustworthy as to /act. 
His misrepresentation of me is so systematic, continu- 
ous, and stealthy, that to convict him and prove my 
points everywhere would need a volume. I can only 
give leading matters, which indeed will suflice. 

1. I have already noted how falsely he insinuates 
that I claim some exclusive inspiration; whereas I 
only claim that which all pious Christians and Jews 
since David have always claimed. So resolute is he 
here to ridicule me, that, in p. 87, he proposes to nick- 
pame me Professor of Spiritual Insight. 

2. He often implies and inculcates that my religion, 
according to me, has received nothing by Traditional 
and Historical agencies; that it owes nothing to men 
who went before me; that I believe I have a spiritual 
faculty “so bright as to anticipate all essential spiritu- 
al verities,’ p. 180; that had it not been for Tradition- 
al religion, “we should everywhere have heard the 
invariable utterance of spiritual religion in the one 
dialect of the heart,’ p. 185; that “this divinely im- 
planted faculty of spiritual discernment anticipates all 


‘6 THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.’’ 13 


external* truth,” p. 185; &c., &c. Now all this is so 
far from being my doctrine, that it is the direct and 
most intense reverse of all that I have most elaborately 
and carefully written. I have in the “Soul” dwelt 
largely on the Historical Progress of Religion, and have 
shown how each age depends ordinarily on the preced- 
ing. -In p. 169 of this treatise, the same is distinctly 
advanced. In p. 174 our mutual dependence is set 
forth. What is more, in my treatise on the Soul I 
have assimilated religious science to mathematical sci- 
ence, in respect to two cardinal facts: Ist, that each 
man inherits immense advantage from the labors of 
preceding minds; 2d, that each man has to appropri- 
ate these labors for himself, and learn to believe inde- 
pendently of the authority of his teachers. Until he has 
attained this point, he has learned nothing as he ought. 
Now I may be right, or wrong, in holding that relig- 
ious science and all science have these points in com- 
_ mon; but, inasmuch as the case of mathematics is in- 
disputably clear, no man ought to misunderstand me, 
and no one has a right to pretend that I am self-con- 
tradictory, as a plea for his misrepresentations. This 
author says of me: “Every oNE can see that Mr. 
Newman’s system too has been derived from without ; 
that it is, in fact, nothing but a distorted Christianity.” 
p- 136. This is intended to make the reader supposé 
that I deny it. Denyt it? Just as much as I deny 
that my mathematics have come from Euler, and New- 


* For external truth possibly he meant to write “external transmission 
of truth.” 

+ Similarly p. 146: “Zé ts odd that Mr. Newman does nov perceive that, 
if it were not for the Bible, his religion would no more have assumed the 
peculiar cast it has, than that of Aristotle and Cicero.” Yet in p. 294 he 
quotes what proves that I do perceive it. 


t Of course the invidious word distorted is not mine. 
2) 


a 


rd 
14 REPLY TO 


ton, and Descartes, and Archimedes, and Euclid. 
Deny it? Why, this writer perfectly knows the con- 
trary. In this very discussion he argues against my 
doctrine of “ progress” in religion, p. 141. In p. 294, 
he quotes my grateful recognition of the Bible, where 
he thinks he can use* it against me. And yet he 
pretends I am not aware that I have learned. from 
Christian teachers ! 

For the sake of any one who is really and honestly: 
stupid as to my meaning, I will here reiterate, that when 
I deny that History can be Religion, or a part of Re- 
ligion, I mean it exactly in the same sense in which 
we all say that History is not Mathematics. “ New- 
ton wrote the Principia”: true; but to make that prop- 
osition a part of Mathematics would be an egregious 
blunder as to the very nature of the science. A man 
might be quite as good a mathematician, though he 
had never heard of Newton’s name. In the above, 
change Newton and Principia into Moses and Penta- 
teuch, or David and Psalms, or Paul and Epistles, and 
change Mathematics into Religion,—and (I say) all 
remains true. I may be right, or I may be wrong; 
but I speak most distinctly. Religion and Mathemat- 
ics alike come to us by Historical Transmission ; but 
where the sciences flourish, we judge of them for our- 
selves, make them our own, become independent of our 
teachers, add to their wisdom, and bequeathe an im- 
proved store to our successors; but these sciences have 
never flourished, and cannot flourish, where received 


* Even there he proceeds to tell his reader that the Bible has had “ more 
to do than I think” with originating my present conceptions of truth. 
Where have I claimed any personal originality? To prove one’s original- 
ity in moral and spiritual thought, can scarcely ever be possible, since we 
all are always imbibing from all sides ; to assert it, therefore, is never ad- 
visable. The New Testament has very little or¢ginal truth. 


‘6 THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 15 


on authority. They come to us by external transmis- 
sion, but are not believed because of that transmission ; 
and no historical facts concerning that transmission 
are any part of the science at all. Mathematics is 
concerned with Relations of Quantities, Religion with 
the normal Relations between Divine and Human Na- 
ture. That ts all. 

3. I must quote another very gross case of garbling 
by this author. In p. 224 he writes :— 

“Do you remember, that Mr. Newman says that, 
when he was a boy, he read Benson’s Life of Fletcher, 
and thought Fletcher a more perfect man than Jesus 
Christ?.... As to Mr. Newman’s impression, I do 
not think it worth an answer. When a man so forgets 
himself as to say what he can hardly help knowing will 
be unspeakably painful to multitudes of his fellow- 
creatures on the strength of boyish impressions,.... I 
think it scarcely worth while to reply. Christianity is 
willing to consider the arguments of men, but not the 
impressions of boys.” 

No one can possibly read this, without understand- 
ing that I recommended my boyish impressions as 
something trustworthy, something for which I claimed 
respect from “ Christianity.’ This is not said indeed, 
but is distinctly implied, and, I am forced to think, is 
undoubtedly the idea intended to be impressed on 
readers. Yet it is simply and totally the very reverse 
of the fact. 

He says, that, when a boy, I thought Fletcher a 
more perfect man than Jesus Christ. This is not true: 
I made no comparison whatever. The idea did not 
occur to me, and Gould not then occur. My statement 
was, that Fletcher, as depicted by Benson, appeared to 
me, when I was a boy, to be a perfect man (I did not 
say more perfect than Jesus); and the inference which 


16 REPLY TO 


I drew was, not that my boyish impression deserved 
respect, but that it may be a warning how wntrustwor- 
thy is such criticism, proceeding from the uneducated, 
who are no wiser in criticism than I was when a boy. 

The author of the “ Eclipse” has here again intrud- 
ed into a controversy with which he has no concern. 
As, elsewhere, he officiously fights the battle of sceptics 
against me, so here he fights that of a remarkable and 
able, but very new and very small school. Unitarians, 
to whom (I believe) he would ordinarily refuse the 
Christian name, he is now pleased to identify with 
Christianity. “ Curistraniry is not willing to consid- 
er the impressions of boys!” Why? Because I say 
to my Unitarian friends, — Since you will yourselves 
admit that I made a great blunder when a boy, in mis- 
taking the overdrawn picture of Mr. Fletcher’s excel- 
lence for a perfect reality, — since this was an illusion 
which manly criticism hardly sufficed to dispel, — it 
appears to me that you cannot supersede miracles and 
the miraculous conception of Jesus, by setting the un- 
critical to judge for themselves in favor of the Moral 
Perfection of Jesus, and make that judgment the basis 
of Christianity. 

Now this author happens to agree with me so far. 
He even intensely rejects the belief that our discern- 
ment of the moral and spiritual can be made the basis 
of religion: it is his cardinal point of attack against 
me. But when I oppose my friend Martineau, who 
goes beyond me in this, — (for I only say that our dis- 
cernment, defective as it is, is the best thing we have 
got, and the only thing that can be made a basis at all; 
while Martineau says that illiterate, uneducated people 
ought to have, and have, so sound a moral discern- 
ment, as not only to judge that a character is above 
them, but that it is infinitely Perfect and an Absolute 


“ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 17 


Model, and is a historical truth; and this I cannot ad- 
mit,) — well, when Iam engaged in contending against 
a view, which neither this author nor Christendom 
holds, in he steps, and announces that “ Christianity is 
not willing to listen to the impression of boys.” 

The paragraph on which he commented is supersed- 
ed in this edition by a chapter concerning the Moral 
Perfection of Jesus. I only fear that those who read 
my new discussion may think that I have erred on the 
opposite side of that imputed to me, — namely, think 
that I was too tender to prevalent opinion. I think it 
right here to reprint my old paragraph, lest it be fancied 
that there is something which I desire to conceal. The 
author of the “ Kclipse” did not print it. As usual, he 
withheld from his readers all power of judging for 
themselves whether his representations of me were fact. 
I wrote thus, p. 209: — 

“TY do not at all see how the uneducated can judge 
on the literary question, ‘whether it is, or is not, pos- 
sible for the portrait of Jesus to be imaginary and un- 
real.’ Heroes are described in superhuman dignity, 
why not in superhuman goodness? Many biographies 
overdraw the virtue of their subject. An experienced 
critic can sometimes discern this ; but certainly the un- 
critical cannot always. JI remember, when a boy, to 
have read the life of Fletcher of Madeley, written by 
Benson; and he appeared to me an absolutely perfect 
man; [and at this day, if I were to read the book 

“afresh, I suspect I should think his character a more 
perfect: one than that of Jesus.] Hence this view does 
not get rid of the objection, that Religion must not 
be made a problem of Literature.” 

The words here placed in brackets I now see would 
have been better omitted; since they seem to have dis- 


tracted the mind from my argument, which did not 
Q* 


18 REPLY TO 


need them. But I cannot admit that they contain 
anything to give just offence. I specially selected Mr. 
Fletcher, as an eminently noble type of the qualities 
for which Jesus is esteemed, and I proceeded to speak 
of him as an “admirable person.” After all, my com- 
parison was not between Fletcher and Jesus, but be- 
tween the portraits drawn for the two by devoted ad- 
mirers: and my inference was, not that Fletcher was 
really the more perfect man, but that uncritical facul- 
ties are not competent duly to guard against the ex- 
travagant praise of a partial biographer. 

4. This writer instils into his readers the belief that 
I make a fanatical separation between the intellectual 
and the spiritual (p. 106),—a “divorce” between 
them (p. 108),— and concludes that I hold that Faith 
need not rest upon Truth; and I ought to be indiffer- 
ent as to the worship of Jehovah, or of the image which 
fell down from Jupiter (p.113). He never quotes 
enough from me to let his reader understand what is 
meant by the words which he does quote. In my book 
on the Soul I wrote, — speaking of spiritual progress, 
— p. 106, 3d edition : — 

“ A comfortable mediocrity is all that ati result, un- 
less the moral perceptions keep rising, — which is indeed 
the only healthful state. To this, however, it is prob- 
able that increasing mental culture is in certain stages 
essential..... In such case, the advance of that knowl- 
edge which is purely intellectual and negative (which 
on that account religious men are apt to dread), is ab- 
solutely requisite for farther spiritual progress. " To 
destroy superstition does not in itself impart religion ; 
yet the destruction is necessary, if religion is to 
flourish.” | 

The writer of the “ Eclipse” has read this, and yet 
he pretends that I “ divorce” the intellectual from the 


““ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”? 19 


spiritual, and ought to be indifferent to the purity of 
religious truth! In the same chapter I have contended 
against strictly Biblical Christians in favor of Science 
and Art; and I say, p. 120: “ The evolving of ‘Truth 
and culture of Imagination tend to elevate and perfect. 
man, side by side with the influences of direct Devo- 
tion. For nearly two centuries, men of Science have 
been our only school of Prophets.” 

What can this writer have meant by his misrepre- 
sentations? I cannot pretend that I do not under- 
stand ; for Ido. The sceptic whom he sets at me is 
essentially a profane intellect, free to ridicule the most 
fundamental principles of the New Testament. He 
can, at pleasure, not only disown, —“ God hath chosen 
the poor of this world, rich in faith,”— and, “ Not many 
wise are called”: he, also assumes that acuteness of 
understanding, without sanctity of heart, opens divine 
knowledge to us, and that a man who blunders in 
questions of history and of literature ought to be de- 
spised in religion. Such pleas are vehemently pressed 
against me by this Mr. Harrington, and (unless the 
author is most grossly iniquitous) are believed by the 
author. Now in pp. 44, 46, 50, 69, 97, and elsewhere, 
above, I have denoted how I was gradually forced to 
modify the Biblical doctrine, which I now see to de- 
grade pure intellect too much. But I still avow, with 
Paul and John, that in the soul, and not in the dry 
mind, are the eyes which discern spiritual things, and _ 
that the affections must be spiritualized, if we are to 
be right judges of such topics. Mr. Harrington treats 
this as a rich absurdity, and the author makes Mr. Fel- 
lowes (p. 46) -also* confess that it is a personal vain 
assumption inme. It is then clear, that I agree too 


* Quoted above, p. 11. 


20 REPLY TO 


nearly with the Christian Apostles for the author’s 
taste; his attack is really on them, when it seems to be 
onme. But I may not dwell here longer on this, and 
proceed to remark on two principal subjects, on which, 

in fact, our whole controversy turns. 

First, I shall notice his treatment of Authoritative 
Imposition of Belief concerning Moral Truth, or the pro- 
priety of “ Book-Revelation”; a word which he has 
adopted from me, and uses it a hundred times because 
I have used it twice. Secondly, I shall speak of what 
he calls the weightiest topic, — viz. the inevitable cer- 
tainty that my principle would make the lively Mr. 
Harrington an atheist. 

J. On Book-Revelation, he has a conversation reach- 
ing from p. 73 to p. 96, without one extract from me 
by which the reader may learn for himself what it is 
that I hold, and much less how I defend my views. 
In p. 73, a preliminary summary of them is thus given 
by him: “A book-revelation of moral and spiritual 
truth is impossible; and, God reveals himself to us 
from within, and not from without.” A second trea- 
tise of his own, on “ Book-Revelation,’ reaches from 
p. 283 to p. 304, and in this long discussion he does not 
make room for any extract from me, except one in 
grateful acknowledgment of the Bible. He still sedu- 
lously keeps his readers in ignorance of my arguments. 
The fullest quotations that I can find are in p. 119, 
where he is treating a different subject. I shall ad- 
duce them presently, because they are the fullest. 

His avowed argument against me is in the Socratic 
dispute, pp. 73-96. As usual,—conscious, it seems, 
that a spiritual subject, treated seriously by him, is 
likely to be rather dull,—he thinks it more politic to 
be witty ; so he undertakes to make Mr. Fellowes ad- 
mit that “Mr. Newman has done for him what God 


‘‘THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”? pa 


cannot do”; or, in another form of ingenuity, “If Mr. 
Newman can do so much by a book, what might not 
God do!” (p. 83.) What then have I done? Ihave 
achieved the divine task of becoming the author of a 
book-revelation to the empty-headed Mr. Fellowes; 
which I professed that it was beyond the power of God 
to do forme. Indeed! Let us then hear what (ac- 
cording to this author) I actually have said. In p. 119 
(his fullest quotation) it stands thus: “ What God re- 
veals to us he reveals within, through the medium of 
our moral and spiritual senses.” —“ Christianity itself 
has practically confessed, what is theoretically clear, — 
(you must take Mr. Newman’s word for both,) — that 
an authoritative external revelation of moral and spirit- 
ual truth is essentjally impossible to man.’ —“No 
_book-revelation can (without snapping its own pedes- 
tal) authoritatively dictate laws of human virtue, or 
alter our a priort view of the divine character.” The 
reader will observe that this author inserts a clause of 
his own: “you must take Mr. Newman’s word for 
both” ; i. e. both for the fact that Christianity has con- 
fessed it, and for the fact that theory makes it clear. 
He thus informs his reader that I have dogmatized 
without giving reasons. And to deceive the reader 
into easy credence, he dislocates my sentences, alters 
their order, omits an adverb .of inference, and isolates 
these three sentences out of a paragraph of forty-six 
closely printed lines, which carefully reason out the 
whole question. Not to be needlessly tedious, I omit 
the two first sentences of it. I had written : — 

“No heaven-sent Bible can guarantee the veracity of 
God toa man who doubts that veracity. Unless we 
have independent means of knowing that God knows 
the truth and is disposed to tell it to us, his word (if we 
be ever so certain that it is really his word) might as well 


pie)! REPLY TO 


not have been spoken. But if we know, independently 
of the Bible, that God knows the truth, and is disposed 
to tell it to us, obviously we know a great deal more 
also; we know, not only the existence of God, but 
much concerning his character. or only by discern- 
ing that he has virtues similar in kind to human virtues, 
do we know of his truthfulness and goodness. With- 
out this a@ priori belief, a book-revelation is a useless 
impertinence ; hence no book-revelation can, without 
sapping its own pedestal, authoritatively dictate laws 
of human virtue, or alter our @ priori views of the di- 
vine character. The nature of the case implies, that 
the human mind is competent to sit in moral and spir- 
itual judgment on a professed revelation, and to de- 
cide (if the case seem to require it) in the following 
tone: This doctrine attributes to God what we should 
call harsh, cruel, or unjust in man; it is therefore in- 
trinsically inadmissible: for if God may be (what we 
should call). cruel, he may equally well be (what we 
should call) a liar; and if so, of what use is his word 
to us ?— And in fact, all Christian apostles and mis- 
sionaries, like the Hebrew prophets, have always re- 
futed Paganism by direct attacks on its immoral and 
unspiritual doctrines; and have appealed to the con- 
sciences of heathens, as competent to decide in the 
controversy. Christianity itself has ruus practically 
confessed what is theoretically clear, that an authorita- 
tive external revelation of moral and spiritual truth is 
essentially impossible to man. What God reveals to 
us, he reveals within, through the medium of our moral 
and spiritual senses. External teaching may be a 
training of those senses, but affords no foundation for 
certitude.” 

Of this passage, the first six sentences carefully prove 
that a book guaranteed by God is worthless to a man 


“THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.’ 23 


who has no convictions concerning the heart of God, 
and in consequence, that it is necessarily incapable of 
overturning and reversing moral judgments. After 
thus proving it to be “theoretically clear,’ Iadd, “ And 
in fact,” &c., and go on to show how Christians have _ 
actually proceeded. Then I sum up: “ Christianity it- 
self has ruus practically confessed what is theoretically 
clear,’ &c. The omission of the word tTuvs by this 
author shows his deliberate intention to destroy the 
reader’s clew to the fact, that I had given proof where 
he suppresses it, and says that I have’ given none. 
The sentences quoted as 1, 2, 3 by him, with me have 
the order 3, 2,1. What he places first is with me an 
immediate and necessary deduction from what has pre- 
ceded. This will show my reader, first, that the author 
feels the weight of my reasons so painfully, that he 
does not dare to bring them forward ; secondly, since 
he has not impugned my arguments, but has sup- 
pressed them, and told his readers that I have given 
none, a sufficient reply on my part is to reprint them, 
and to warn people that merriment may be founded on 
fiction; thirdly, it will be seen that I should need to 
write folios to expose tricks of this kind; fourthly, I 
beg the reader to observe that the long paragraph just 
quoted is that in which, according to this discerning 
author, I “make myself merry” on this grave subject. 
But we have still to see how by all this the author 
proves what he pleasantly expresses by saying that 
“God raised up his servant Newman to perform the 
office” (p. 82) for Mr. Fellowes, which God himself 
could not perform for Mr. Newman. It is thus: — The 
Omnipotent is unable to achieve an authoritative ex- 
ternal revelation for Mr. Newman, but Mr. Newman 
has achieved it for Mr. Fellowes!— The latter is the 
cardinal racr adduced by the historical genius of our 


24 REPLY TO 


author, who here, as elsewhere, desires to found the 
Spiritual upon the Legendary, and abhors the basis of 
Moral Truth. If Mr. Fellowes has made me authorita- 
tive, how can I be absurd enough to make difficulties 
about adopting Paul or Mark or Jonah or Esther as 
authoritative? — But no! Surely the author means 
merely that Mr. Fellowes found my book instructive ? 
If so, with what sort of honesty can he pretend that I 
do not admit the Bible to be instructive? It is too 
true, that in this long dialogue, from p. 73 to p. 96, he 
never lets that out; though much later, at p. 294, 
where he has a purpose to serve, he quotes from me to 
this effect. It would have been injudicious for his ar- 
gument to suggest this to the reader in the earlier dis- 
cussion. But if I ever so much despised the Bible, 
have I ever inculcated that all books, as such, are 
worthless; so as to be confuted by the bare fact of 
writing a book at all? This certainly is ‘nplied by 
the scoff, that I can “do nothing but write books 
against book-revelations.” But listen to one passage 
from me (“Soul,” p. 133, 3d ed.). After highly ex- 
tolling Hymns, I add: “Prose works have their own 
place, as eminent spiritual aids. But it is needless to 
say a word more on a subject which EVERYBODY so 
well appreciates.” After this, it is pretended that I 
cannot become myself a spiritual aid to Mr. Fellowes, 
or (as the facetious author styles it) “an infinite bene- 
factor to him,” without overthrowing my own doctrine ; 
which is, that if an angel from heaven bade me to 
lie, and to steal, and to commit adultery, and to mur- 
der, and to scoff at good men, and usurp dominion 
over my equals, and do unto others everything that I 
wish not to have done unto me, I ought to reply, Bz 
THou ANATHEMA! This, I believe, was Paul’s doctrine ; 
this is mine; for this I am garbled, misrepresented, and 


‘¢7HE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 25 


jibed at by one “who is greatly shocked that I do not 
honor Paul and the Bible enough. 

II. I proceed to the second topic, — viz. the danger, 
or rather the certainty, that my principles will force the 
sceptical Mr. Harrington to become an atheist. Now 
this prospect does not terrify me: since I think it 
might be an improvement to Mr. Harrington; a first 
step towards truth. I hold Morality as my religious 
basis; and on it I build that God is essentially moral. 
A serious atheist, like Mr. G. J. Holyoake, holds Mo- 
rality, as I do, to be a fixed certainty, but doubts wheth- 
er there is any personal God. But Mr. Harrington is 
unsettled on both points. With him Morality has no 
fixedness, — indeed, he is insolent with me because I 
treat it as an immovable foundation, which I will not 
allow to be tampered with by any pretence of miracle; 
and he is equally uncertain whether there is any good 
God. ‘Thus of my two principles the real atheist, Mr. 
Holyoake, holds one, and the more fundamental; while 
Mr. Harrington holds neither. Mr. Holyoake has lec- 
tured on and against my book on the Soul, and has be- 
haved with fairness, courtesy, and generosity. He has 
not garbled nor ridiculed me: he leaves it to one who 
calls himself Christian to scoff at sentiments which I 
have learned from Christianity. 

But I must quote the author’s own words, p. 148 :— 

“ T now proceed to what I acknowledge is the most 
weighty topic of my argument; which is, to prove that, 
if I acquiesce, on Mr. Newman’s grounds, in the rejec- 
tion of the Bible as a special revelation of God, Iam 
compelled on the very same principles to go a few steps 
further, and to express doubts of the absolutely divine 
original of the worwup and the administration thereof, 
just as he does of the divine original of the Bible...... 
{On Mr. Newman’s grounds] I cannot do otherwise 

3 


26 REPLY TO 


than reject much of the revelation of God in his pre- 
sumed works as unworthy of him, just as Mr. Newman 
does in his supposed word as equally unworthy of 
him.” 

P.149. “‘ Mr. Newman ought, in consistency, to have 
gone a little further...... If it be found impossible to 
solve these difficulties [in the administration of the uni- 
verse] let him acknowledge, either that our supposed 
essential “intuitions ” of moral rectitude are not to be 
trusted as applicable to the Supreme Being,..... or 
that no such Being exists;..... ’ &e. 


“ Here Fellowes broke in: —‘If indeed there be any 


such instances; but Mr. Newman will reply, that they 
will be sought for in vain in the world, however plenti- 
ful in the Bible.’ 

“¢]T know not whether he would deny them, or not; 
but they are found in great abundance in the world 
notwithstanding, and this is my difficulty,” 

What are found? I cannot quote such diffuse writ- 
ing at full; but it is, “things which shock the moral 
sense as flagrantly immoral, and which Mr. Newman 
must reject as not sanctioned by God.” He presently 
(p. 152) gives as examples the earthquake of Lisbon 
and the plague of London, which are thus laid down 


to be flagrant immoralities, which not only will make 


Mr. Harrington an atheist or pagan, but (he adds) 
ought to make me such, if Iam consistent. Now who 
is it that tells me that such natural events are flagrant 
immoralities, which, if we dare to dwell on them, will 
make us atheists or pagans? Is it only the sceptical 
Mr. Harrington? If so, what hinders me from simply 
saying (what is the truth) that I know all these facts, 
and I do not see that they prove Paganism? What 
hinders me? is it only the intense dogmatism of a fic- 
titious person, who blusteringly rules, that (whatever I 


» 


‘6 THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 27 


pretend to the contrary) the racts of the universe arg 
Pagan? No: not only. The bold dogmatism of the 
sceptic is indorsed and confirmed by the author. In- 
deed, were it not so, the elaborate and vehement argu- 
ment would be obviously ridiculous; but he means it 
to be cogent, and avows that it is. In the close, wind- 
ing up in his own name, he says, p. 452: — 

“If the discussions in the preceding pages shall in 
any instance convince the youthful reader of the preca- 
rious nature of those modern book-revelations which 
_are somewhat inconsistently given us in books which 
tell us that all book-revelations of religious truth are 
superfluous or even impossible; if they shall con- 
vince him how easily an impartial [in italics] doubter 
can retort with interest the deistical arguments against 
Christianity, or how little merely insoluble objections 
can avail against any thing;..... I shall be well con- 
tent to bear the charge of having spoiled a Fiction, or 
even of having mutilated a Biography.” 

Here then we have the author without a mask. Let 
us consider what he avows: 

1. That he is satisfied to have the Bible regarded as 
a “book-revelation” im that sense, and in that only, in 
which my writings are “ book-revelations” to those 
whom they happen to convince. — If he does not mean 
this, the words are palpably and inexcusably dishonest. 

2. That Mr. Harrington, in his assaults on the God 
revealed in the universe, shows himself to be an impar- 
tial doubter. 

3. That the objections which Mr. Harrington makes 
to the morality of the God of Nature, —the God who 
permits an earthquake of Lisbon,—are insoluble, 
equally with those against the morality of the God of 
the Bible. 

It immediately occurs to ask, how he confutes Hin- 


28 REPLY TO 


dooism or Fetichism, or any of those Calmuck “ scoun- 
drels” (p. 114, 132, &c.) towards whom he is so scorn- 
ful that Theodore Parker has a brother’s heart. If “ in- 
soluble objections” against the morality of a religion 
are to go for nothing, —if we must throw away our 
moral judgment before we can get any religion at all, 
—no exclusive claims tan be made out for his special 
form of religion. But I leave others to dwell on this; 
and I remark, that we have here a distinct avowal of 
what indeed pervades the whole discussion ; that, in the 
-author’s deliberate judgment, the racts of the universe 
are so horrible, that they must make every honest and 
competent man an atheist, who does not throw away 
his moral judgment. He treats me as ridiculous in be- 
lieving that the phenomena are honestly reconcilable 
with the common conscience and heart-morality of hu- 
man nature; and is quite overbearing in the assump- 
tion that the sceptic has the upper hand of me. Mr. 
Fellowes of course is overpowered. ‘The author, 
speaking under a mask, uses a bold license of blas- 
phemy against Nature and its God, which too clearly 
comes from the heart. Hear a little more of his edify- 
ing professions, p. 105: — 

“ All these perplexities are increased, when I trace 
them up to that profound mystery in which they all 
originate, —I mean the permission of physical and 
moral evil. Either evil could have been prevented or 
not. If it could, its immense and horrible prevalence is 
at war with the intuition already referred to: if it could 
not, who shall prove it? Iam no more able to contra- 
dict the intuitions of my intellect, than those of my 
conscience; and if anything can be called a contradic- 
tion of the former, it is to be told that & Being of infi- 
nite power, wisdom, and beneficence could not con- 


struct a world without an immensity of evil in it; no | 


“THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 29 


reason being assignable, or even imaginable, for such a 
proposition, except the fact, that such a world has not 
been created. I am therefore compelled to doubt, wheth- 
er this Universe be really the fabrication of such a Be- 
ing. 99 

"The sceptic’s facts, and the validity of his argument, 
are both enforced upon me by the author; and the 
only mode admitted by him of escaping the conclusion 
is by saying that we must resolve not to trust moral 
criticism at all in religious arguments. 

Ee Loo? < Yweas talking to a friend on these subjects 
the other day: ‘ Ah! but,” said he, ‘many of those diffi- 
culties you mention oppress every hypothesis, — Chris- 
tianity as much as the rest. 

“This (I replied) is no answer to me [the sceptic], 
nor to you [the theist], if you have a particle of can- 
dor; still less is it one to the Christian, who consist- 
ently applies the same principle of ansotute faith to 
things apparently @ priori incredible, whether in the 
Words, or in the Works, of God.” 

How anxiously the sceptic fights the Christian’s bat- 
tle! He is not satisfied with refuting the Theist, but 
he must justify (what the author calls) the Christian 
also. Manifestly we have here the author’s own senti- 
ment. And what does he say? He admits that the 
charges of immorality which he so vehemently urges 
against the God of Nature press with equal weight 
against the God of Christianity; but he adds, this goes 
for nothing with the Christian, who resolves to receive 
“with absolute faith things apparently a priori incredi- 
ble,’ not only when he finds them 4 posteriori in the 
mighty Universe of which man is a growth and small 
member, but also when they are presented to him gra- 
tuitously in books written by men. When we are in 


’ the act of discussing whether a book is or is not guar- 
8 * 


30 REPLY TO 
“ 


anteed to us by the God of the Universe, he demands 
as a reasonable preliminary that we will approach the 
Book with the very same reverence as we approach the 
Universe, and will asswme that the Book is the “ Word” 
of God as surély as the Universe is his “ Work.” — 
This, however, is not the point to which I at present 
direct chief attention; but, that he thinks to aid his 
Christian faith by darkening that God of Nature whom 
he is putting forward as the author and sanctioner of 
the Bible. He announces that Nature holds up to me 
an immoral God, and he bids me therefore to be con- 
tent with the same in Christianity. He assures me 
that the Christian, having swallowed all the immoral- 
ities of the Bible by absolute unreasoning faith, finds 
no difficulty whatever in also swallowing the immoral- 
ities of the God of Nature; and so too, if I can’swal- 
low those of Nature (which he enforces on me vehe- 
mently), I ought not to object to those of the Bible. 
He not only makes no attempt to reconcile with the 
common conscience any of the moral enormities in the 
Bible, but admits that the objections are “ insoluble.” 
If I tell him that the intended sacrifice of a first-born 
son did not deserve eulogy, — that the permission to. 
Israel of indiscriminate plunder, massacre, and concu- 
binage against the whole human race (Deut. xx. 15) is 
an atrocity,*— he has no reply whatever, except that 
the God of Nature is equally atrocious. In short, the 


* I must remind the reader, that I never suggested nor endured the idea 
of rejecting a religion (collectively) for the sake of errors which could be 
separated from it. This author labors to convince his readers, that that is 
my doctrine, and has been my history; but both are his own fiction. 
Moreover, as a fact,— (though I now regard it as my weakness and not 
my merit,) — moral criticism is precisely that which I was slowest to use 
against authoritative claims. To me the system broke down /irst, pre- 
cisely on that side which alone this author counts defensible, — viz. the 
external evidences. . 


‘6 THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 31 


objections which moralists urge against various parts 
and principles of current Christianity, he concedes to 
be unanswerable on the hypothesis that God has moral 
judgments comparable with our own; but he replies, 
_ that the hypothesis itself is the error of sentimental De- 
ists. A God endowed with pure morality he treats as 
an arbitrary and wilful fiction of my own, and says 
that it only remains for me to invent a universe for my- 
self, as well as a God. It is impossible, therefore, to 
doubt the intensity of this Christian advocate’s convic- 
tion, that all nature testifies with overpowering force, 
to every “impartial” mind, that its Creator is reckless 
of all moral considerations. 

To soften the alarm which pious Christians may feel 
at his playing so bold a game, the author in his own 
name tells them (p. 164) not to be afraid that his argu- 
ment will really make men atheists or sceptics; for, in 
fact, by leaving no alternative between this and the 
Bisse, it secures that men will come back to the Br- 
BLE.— He does not explain, why it should not be as 
efficacious to drive them into Popery, or any authorita- 
tive system of iniquity whatsoever. His conduct in- 
deed is precisely that of the Papist in theology and the 
Austrian in politics, who try, by destroying every third 
possibility, to force men to choose between anarchy 
and their despotism. All alike defile the: sanctity of 
that for which they claim supremacy, — whether Bible, 
Church, or Throne. “There is no other Right than 
Might,” sums up their common creed. 

Such is the Christianity which this writer preaches 
to me, —an utter disbelief that God has any morality- 
which my conscience, judging freely and impartially, 
can approve. My first process (it seems) towards be- 
coming a Christian must be to disown my conceptions 
of right and wrong as applied to God, and consent (as 


~ 


32 REPLY TO 


appropriate homage) to use epithets concerning him 
(such as good, just, wise, holy) which have been care- 
fully emptied of meaning. The author is tnaware, 
that an unmoral God is the very essence of Paganism, 
and that this, and nothing else, is what he is urging on 
us as Christianity. Oh! how clearly does he show, 
that in him it is hypocrisy to cry Holy! Holy! Holy! 
to the Lord of heaven, whose holiness he professes to 
be totally unlike all that man calls either holy or kind 
or just. Elsewhere this author has caustically reproved — 
my “bastard tolerations and spurious charity” (p. 133) 
towards ‘honorable pagans and atheists (p. 165) who 
fail of reaching my view of truth: but indeed I did not 
quite contemplate such a case as that before me. I 
must wait and learn what sort of charity, not bastard, 
I may cherish towards one who wraps a Pagan heart 
in a Christian veil; who scolds down and mocks at 
-other men’s piety; who constructs sophistical argu- 
ments, to leave them no alternative between his 
own Paganism, which is to them detestable, and an 
Atheism, which they deprecate indeed, but feel far 
preferable to degrading, heart-hardening devil-wor- 
ship. - 

I no longer wonder that to this gentleman the idea 
of our being in danger of undervaluing this word is “so 
exquisitely ludicrous, that he can hardly help bursting 
into laughter.” (p. 58.) But he there also mistook me. 
There is a class of men, who have a spiritual impulse 
and insight which he disowns. Where this inward ac- 
tion is powerful, all history shows the danger of its 
wasting itself in convents or churches or private devo- | 
tions or sacerdotal observances ;— of unduly fixing the 
imagination in Judea, and the motives beyond the 
grave. Such religious persons as the vulgar call 
“saints” do indeed need, in my belief, to be urged to 


“THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.’ 33 


love the things of the world more, and to spend them- 
selves in infusing spiritual life into vulgar and political 
and social and artistic circles, so that earth may be 
made a heaven. But never, never did I address such 
an exhortation to one, who confesses that he has no 
discernment whether the Author of Nature be just or 
unjust, kind or cruel; one, who is inwardly so dark, 
that he cannot possibly have any religion but what he 
receives blindly. Such a one naturally relishes a joke 
better than a psalm, a sceptical dialogue of. Plato or 
Hume better than a treatise on Natural Theology; and 
will scarcely be so absurd as to sacrifice what is sub- 
stantial in this world for a religion which cannot pene- 
trate into his affections. His very arguments whéch 
pretend to be in favor of it are mere wranglings tend- 
ing to fundamental unbelief, and far less religious than, 
those of serious atheists. Such a character of mind 
may make a subtle lawyer, but exposes a man to no 
danger of becoming a mystic or a Puritan. 

Concerning me, this writer speaks as follows, p. 
155: — : ies 

“ I certainly know of no other man who has stood so 
unabashed in the front of these awful forms” (viz. the 
horrible phenomena of Nature which suggest the im- 
morality of God!). “ One almost envies him the truly 
childlike faith with which he waves his hand to these 
Alps, and says, Be ye removed, and cast into the 
sea! But the feeling is exchanged for another when 
he seems to rub his eyes and exclaim, Presto! they 
are gone, sure enough! while you still feel that you 
stand far within the circumference of their awful shad- 
‘ows.” 

On which then of us two has an eclipse of faith fall- 
en? He proclaims his own inability to see anything 
but blackness of darkness in the real, known, undenia- 


34 REPLY TO 


ble* works of God, not knowing that this is to declare 
his vacuity of Faith; and at my Faith he jeers as an 
arbitrary oddity. But I must not accept his compli- 
ment, which is undeserved: I have no singular Faith ¢ 
I do but follow the Universal Church of the faithful, 
and assent to the testimony which has satisfied strong 
minds as well as weak ones. With Paul and Isaiah, 
with AXschylus and Cleanthes, with Socrates and Pa- 
ley, with Philo and Swedenborg, I see that a good 
God reigns over all. This author declares all the evi- 
dence of facts to convict my sentiment as a gratuitous 
absurdity ; yet he calls himself a Christian; and reviles 
me as an infidel. With the Hebrew Psalmist, my heart 
avews, “ All thy works praise thee, O God! and thy 
saints give thanks unto thee.” My Christian monitor 
puts a new song into my mouth, “ All thy works convict 
thee, O God! and none but fools can praise thee for 
them.” —“ The Lord is good to all, and his tender mer- 
cies are over all his works,” cries the same Psalmist: 
“The Lord, for aught you are able to know, is bad ; 
earthquakes and plagues confute his tender mercies,” — 
says my more intelligent teacher, the author of the 
“ Eclipse.” With energetic and dogmatic earnestness 
he enforces upon me, that God, as revealed to him and 
me in Nature, has no consistent or trustworthy moral 
character. Well: if so, how can any Bible have au- 
thority? Can anything be more imbecile, than to talk 
of an authoritative Revelation from a God who may be 
a devil? Jf, for aught I know, God is a liar, why am 
L to believe his word, if I be ever so sure that it is his 
word? ‘This topic I had put at the very head of my 
discussion. It has not been convenient to the author 


“I say undeniable; for no atheist will object to use the word of God as 
the unknown Power dwelling in and forming the universe, if it be kept in 
mind that the qualities of this Power are the subject of investigation. 


‘6 THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 385 


to make Mr. Fellowes press it, since this alone suffices 
to crush his whole treatise of 450 pages. Honesty, as 
well as Spiritual Insight, seems to be lacking here. 
It is :possible that he may retort, by asking me why 
I do not solve the arguments, by which he convicts the 
Lord of heaven and earth of immorality. I have al- 
ready enunciated my view (for which I claim no origi- 
nality) as clearly as I am able; and he professes to de- 
spise it. I suppose his contempt to be genuine; yet I 
cannot help observing, that he has never allowed his 
readers distinctly to learn what my doctrine is. I will 
briefly restate it. If we had no Intelligence, we should 
have no idea of an intelligent God, any more than have 
the beasts. But conscious of my own intelligence, I 
cannot imagine that the great Unknown Power from 
which it sprang is not far more intelligent. — So, too, if 
we had no Moral Affections, it could never occur to us 
to impute Moral Affections to God. But being con- 
scious that I have personally a little Love, and a little 
Goodness, I ask concerning it, as concerning Intelli- 
gence, “ Where did I pick it up?” and I feel an in- 
vincible persuasion, that, if I have some moral good- 
ness, the great Author of my being has infinitely more. 
He did not merely make rocks and seas and stars and 
brutes, but the human Soul also; and therefore I am 
assured, he possesses all the powers and excellences of 
that Soul in an infinitely higher degree. Hence it is 
Jrom within that we know the morality of God.— To 
the author of the “ Eclipse,” this seems such a piece of 
cant, that I deserve to be chained to a stake, and torn 
to pieces by a profane dog.. The very idea of my hav- 
ing Faith in the God who made me he treats as pre- 
sumptuous arrogance, unless I will also believe that the 
Spirit of God praised Jael for a perfidious murder. 
__ Provided that I will let him degrade and defile my 


36 | REPLY TO 


hy 


God, he is willing that I should worship: not else. — I 
do not see the sterner facts of the world and of human 
nature with his gloomy eyes; but my faith in the mor- 
al qualities of the Infinite Deity does not rest on those 
facts. Until this writer learns the Scriptural doctrine, 
that “he who loveth, knoweth God,’ he must, I sup- 
pose, abide in his darkness. “When the Bible has failed 
to develop in him spiritual insight, why should my 
words be more successful? Yes! it is hard to en- 
lighten one, who, after the outward washing of Chris- 
tian baptism, has gone back into the mire of Pagan 
demonry. 

If, however, in the character which he bestows on 
me, as “ Professor of Spiritual Insight,’ I were called 
on to advise for him, I should decidedly recommend 
diet to the soul, not exercise to the intellect. Let him 
cast away sco and self-sufficiency ; let him seek for a 
little more of that charity which he calls “ bastard” ; 
let him not think that questions which pertain to God 
are advanced by boisterous glee and facetious scoffs 
and personal antagonisms; let him chatter less, and 
watch over his own heart more; let him cherish more 
truthfulness and directness, and much more tenderness 
of conscience. If he opens his mind to truth and his 
heart to love, I do not despair that he will at length 
find it to be an axiom of his soul, that God also is 
Love. But as long as he indulges contempt and lev- 
ity and love of victory, and deals unscrupulously, no 
acuteness of intellect will bring him out of those “ aw- 
ful shadows” which he avows to wrap us all around. 


Not the least marvellous fact connected with the 
“ Eclipse of Faith,” is the chorus of greeting which has 


‘* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 37 


welcomed it from the religious reviews. From the 
highest ecclesiastical to the lowest dissenting organ, 
there has been cordial praise and exultation ; aad even 
on the outmost heterodoxy there has been sieebiut 
tion at the appearance of the work. Its rapid run into 
a second edition has led to redoubled applause, — What 
must be the destitution of the Christian cause, before 
it could welcome such an ally ? 

I will finally remark, that when such Protestants as 
Hugh MecNeile, Rehan Whately, Dr. Professor 
Fawcett, and Baden Powell attack the Church of 
Rome on various pleas,—as falsehood, immorality, 
cruelty, — we all understand that the attack is not the 
less weighty, though the assailants have great diversity 
in their positive creed: nor is it any sound and valid 
defence on the part of a Papist, but a mere evasion, to 
deride their variety of opinion, instead of answering 
their objections. So also it is an impotent and dishon- 
est defence of Christian authoritative pretensions, to 
taunt the assailants with diversities in their positive 
creed. Mr. Harrington freely couples my name with 
that of Theodore Parker, —a noble writer who needs 
not my defence,—and he tries to break our heads 
against one another. He dreads lest we establish some | 
positive and valuable truth without his machinery; and 
ridicules us for those diversities which merely prove our 
mutual independence. "When we are wiser and better, 
we shall, I trust, reach higher and reconciling points of 
view ; but meanwhile, we do what we are able: we 

strive towards truth, each with his own limited facul- 
ties; and though I cannot always follow Theodore 

» Parker, I can always learn from him, and rejoice in his 
aid. 


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THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 


Ler no reader peruse this chapter, who is not willing 
to enter into a discussion as free and unshrinking, con- 
cerning the personal excellences and conduct of Jesus, 
as that of Mr. Grote concerning Socrates. I have 
hitherto met with most absurd rebuffs for my scrupu- 
losity. One critic names me as a principal leader in a 
school which extols and glorifies the character of Jesus ; 
after which he proceeds to reproach me with inconsist- 
ency, and to insinuate dishonesty. Another expresses 
himself as deeply wounded, that, in renouncing the be- 
lief that Jesus is more than man, I suggest to compare 
him to a clergyman whom I mentioned as eminently 
holy and perfect in the picture of a partial biographer ; 
such a comparison is resented with vivid indignation, 
as a blurting out of something “ unspeakably painful.” 
Many have murmured that I do not come forward to 
extol the excellences of Jesus, but appear to prefer 
Paul. More than one taunt me with an inability to 
justify my insinuations that Jesus, after all, was not 
really perfect ; one is “extremely disappointed” that I 
have not attacked him; in short, it is manifest that 
many would much rather have me say out my whole 


heart, than withhold anything. I therefore give fair 
4* 


42 THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 


warning to all, not to read any further, or else to blame 
themselves if I inflict on them “unspeakable pain,” by 
differing from their judgment of a historical or unhis- 
torical character. As for those who confound my ten- 
derness with hypocrisy and conscious weakness, if they 
trust themselves to read to the end, I think they will 
abandon that fancy. 

But how am I brought into this topic? It is be- 
cause, after my mind had reached the stage narrated in 
the last chapter, I fell in with a new doctrine among 
the Unitarians, —that the evidence of Christianity is 
essentially popular and spiritual, consisting in the Life 
of Christ, who is a perfect man and the absolute moral 
image of God, — therefore fitly called “ God manifest 
in the flesh,” and, as such, Moral Head of the human 
race. Since this view was held in conjunction with 
those at which I had arrived myself concerning mira- 
cles, prophecy, the untrustworthiness of Scripture as to 
details, and the essential unreasonableness of imposing 
dogmatic propositions as a creed, I had to consider 
why I could not adopt such a modification, or (as it 
appeared to me) reconstruction, of Christianity; and I 
gave reasons in the first edition of this book, which, 
avoiding direct treatment of the character of Jesus, 
seemed to me adequate on the opposite side. 

My argument was reviewed by a friend, who pres- 
ently published the review with his name, replying to 
my remarks on this scheme. I thus find myself in 
public and avowed controversy with one who is en- 
dowed with talents, accomplishments, and genius, to 
which I have no pretensions. The challenge has cer- 
tainly come from myself. ‘Trusting to the goodness 
of my cause, I have ventured it into an unequal com- 
bat; and from a consciousness of my admired friend’s 
high superiority, I do feel a little abashed at being 


THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 43 


brought face to face against him. But possibly the 
less said to the public on these personal matters, the 
better. 

I have to give reasons why I cannot adopt that mod- 
ified scheme of Christianity which is defended and 
adorned by James Martineau; according to which it is 
maintained that, though the Gospel narratives are not 
to be trusted in detail, there can yet be no reasonable 
doubt what Jesus was ; for this is elicited by a “ higher 
moral criticism,” which (it is remarked) I neglect. In 
this theory, Jesus is avowed to be a man born like other 
men ; to be liable to error, and (at least in some impor- 
tant respects) mistaken. Perhaps no general proposi- 
tion is to be accepted merely on the word of Jesus; in 
particular, he misinterpreted the Hebrew prophecies. 
“ He was not less than the Hebrew Messiah, but more.” 
No moral charge is established against him, until it is 
shown, that, in applying the old prophecies to himself, 
he was conscious that they did not fit. His error was 
one of mere fallibility in matters of intellectual and lit- 
erary estimate. On the other hand, Jesus had an in- 
fallible moral perception, which reveals itself to the 
true-hearted reader, and is testified by the common con- 
sciousness of Christendom. It has pleased the Creator 
to give us one sun in the heavens, and one Divine soul 
in history, in order to correct the aberrations of our in- 
dividuality, and unite all mankind into one family of 
God. Jesus is to be presumed to be perfect until he is 
shown to be imperfect. Faith in Jesus is not reception 
of propositions, but reverence for a person; yet this is 
not the condition of salvation, or essential to the Divine 
favor. 

Such is the scheme, abridged from the ample discus- 
sion of my eloquent friend. In reasoning against it, 
my arguments will, to a certain extent, be those of an 


44 THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 


orthodox Trinitarian ;* since we might both maintain 
that the belief in the absolute divine morality of Jesus 
is not tenable, when the belief in every other divine and 
superhuman quality is denied. Should I have any 
“orthodox” reader, my arguments may shock his feel- 
ings less, if he keeps this in view. In fact, the same 
action or word in Jesus may be consistent or inconsist- 
ent with moral perfection, according to the previous 
assumptions concerning his person. 

I. My friend has attributed to me a “prosaic and 
embittered view of human nature,’ apparently because 
I have a very intense belief of Man’s essential imper- 
fection. 'To me, I confess, it is almost a first principle 
of thought, that, as all sorts of perfection coexist in 
God, so is no sort of perfection possible to man. I do 
not know how for a moment to imagine an Omniscient 
Being who is not Almighty, or an Almighty who is 
not All-Righteous. So neither do I know how to con- 
ceive of Perfect Holiness anywhere but in the Blessed 
and only Potentate. 

Man is finite and crippled on all sides; and frailty 
in one kind causes frailty in another. Deficient power 
causes deficient knowledge, deficient knowledge be- 
trays him into false opinion, and entangles him into 
false positions. It may be a defect of my imagination, 
but I do not feel that it implies any bitterness, that, 
even in the case of one who abides in primitive lowli- 
ness, to attain even negatively an absolutely pure good- 
ness seems to me impossible; and much more, to ex- 
haust all goodness, and become a single Model Man, 


* T have by accident just taken up the “ British Quarterly,” and alighted 
upon the following sentence concerning Madame Roland: “ To say that 
she was without fault, would be to say that she was not human.” This so en- 
tirely expresses and concludes all that I have to say, that I feel surprise at 
my needing at all to write such a chapter as the present. 


THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 45 


unparalleled, incomparable, ‘a standard for all other 
moral excellence. Especially I cannot conceive of any 
human person rising out of obscurity, and influencing 
the history of the world, unless there be in him forces 
of great intensity, the harmonizing of which is a vast 
and painful problem. Every man has to subdue him- 
self first, before he preaches to his fellows; and he en- 
counters many a fall and many a wound in winning 
his own victory. And as talents are various, so do 
moral natures vary, each having its own weak and 
strong side; and that one man should grasp into his 
single self the highest perfection of every moral kind, 
is to me at least as incredible, as that one should pre- 
occupy and exhaust all intellectual greatness. I feel 
the prodigy to be so peculiar, that I must necessarily 
wait until it is overwhelmingly proved, before I admit 
it. No one can without unreason urge me to believe, 
on any but the most irrefutable arguments, that a man, 
finite in every other respect, is infinite in moral perfec- 
tion. 

My friend is “ata loss to conceive in what way a 
superhuman physical nature could tend in the least de- 
gree to render moral perfection more credible.” But I 
think he will see, that it would entirely obviate the ar- 
gument just stated, which, from the known frailty of 
human nature in general, deduced the indubitable im- 
perfection of an individual. The reply is then obvious 
and decisive: “ This individual is not a mere man; his 
origin is wholly exceptional; therefore his moral per- 
fection may be exceptional; your experience of man’s 
weakness goes for nothing in his case.” If I were al- 
ready convinced that this person was a great Unique, 
separated from all other men by an impassable chasm 
in regard to his physical origin, I (for one) should be 
much readier to believe that he was Unique and Unap- 


46 THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 


proachable in other respects: for all God’s works have 
an internal harmony. It could not be for nothing that 
this exceptional personage was sent into the world. 
That he was intended as head of the human race, in 
one or more senses, would be a plausible opinion ; nor 
should I feel any incredulous repugnance against be- 
lieving his morality to be, if not divinely perfect, yet 
separated from that of common men so far, that he 
might be a God to us, just as every parent is to a 
young child. 

This view seems to my friend a weakness ; be it so. 
I need not press it. What I do press is, — whatever 
might or might not be conceded concerning one in hu- 
man form, but of superhuman origin, —at any rate, one 
who is conceded to be, out and out, of the same na- 
ture as ourselves, is to be judged of by our experience 
of that nature, and is therefore to be assumed to be va- 
riously imperfect, however eminent and admirable in 
some respects. And no one is to be called an imagin- 
er of deformity, because he takes for granted that one 
who is Man has imperfections which were not known 
to those who compiled memorials of him. To impute 
to a person, without specific evidence, some definite 
frailty or fault, barely because he is human, would be 
a want of good sense; but not so, to have a firm belief 
that every human being is finite in moral as well as in 
intellectual greatness. 

We have a very imperfect history of the Apostle 
James; and I do not know that I could adduce any 
fact specifically recorded concerning him in disproof of 
his absolute moral perfection, if any of his Jerusalem 
disciples had chosen to set up this as a dogma of re- 
ligion. Yet no one would blame me, as morose, or 
indisposed to acknowledge genius and greatness,-if I 
insisted on believing James to be frail and imperfect, 


THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 47 


while admitting that I knew almost nothing about him. 
And why ?— Singly and surely, because we know him 
to be aman: that suffices. ‘To set up James or John 
or Daniel as my Model and my Lord, to be swallowed 
up in him and press him upon others for a Universal 
Standard, would be despised as a self-degrading idol- 
atry and resented as an obtrusive favoritism. Now 
why does not the same equally apply, if the name Je- — 
sus is substituted for these? Why, in defect of all 
other knowledge than the bare fact of his manhood, are 
we not unhesitatingly to take for granted that he does 
not exhaust all perfection, and is at best only one 
among many brethren and equals? 

II. My friend, I gather, will reply, “ Because so many 
thousands of minds in all Christendom attest the infi- 
nite and unapproachable goodness of Jesus.” It there- 
fore follows to consider, what is the weight of this at- 
testation. Manifestly it depends, first of all, on the 
independence of the witnesses: secondly, on the 
grounds of their belief. If all those who confess the 
moral perfection of Jesus confess it as the result of un- 
biased examination of his character; and if, of those 
acquainted with the narrative, none espouse the oppo- 
site side; this would be a striking testimony, not to be 
despised. But in fact, few indeed of the “witnesses” 
add any weight at all to the argument. No Trinita- 
rian can doubt that Jesus is morally perfect, without 
doubting fundamentally every part of his religion. He 
believes it, because the entire system demands it, and 
because various texts of Scripture avow it: and this 
very fact makes it morally impossible for him to enter 
upon an unbiased inquiry, whether that character 
which is drawn for Jesus in the four Gospels is, or is 
not, one of absolute perfection, deserving to be made 
an exclusive model for all times and countries. My 


48 THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 


friend never was a Trinitarian, and seems not to know 
how this operates; but I can testify, that when I be- 
lieved in the immaculateness of Christ’s character, it 
was not from an unbiased criticism, but from the pres- 
sure of authority, (the authority of ¢ets,) and from the 
necessity of the doctrine to the scheme of Redemption. 
Not merely strict Trinitarians, but all who believe in 
the Atonement, however modified, — all who believe 
that Jesus will be the future Judge, — must believe in 
his absolute perfection: hence the fact of their belief is 
no indication whatever that they believe on the ground 
which my friend assumes, — viz. an intelligent and un- 
biased study of the character itself, as exhibited in the 
four narratives. 

I think we may go farther. We have no reason for 
thinking that this was the sort of evidence which con- 
vinced the apostles themselves, and first teachers of the 
Gospel;— if indeed in the very first years the doctrine 
was at all conceived of. It cannot be shown that any 
one believed in the moral perfection of Jesus, who had 
not already adopted the belief that he was Messiah, 
and therefore Judge of the human race. My friend 
makes the pure immaculateness of Jesus (discernible 
by him in the Gospels) his foundation, and deduces 
from this the quasi-Messiahship: but the opposite order 
of deduction appears to have been the only one possi- 
ble in the first age. Take Paul as a specimen. He 
believed the doctrine in question; but not from reading 
the four Gospels, — for they did not exist. Did he then 
believe it by hearing Ananias (Acts ix. 17) enter into 
details concerning the deeds and words of Jesus? 1 
cannot imagine that any wise or thoughtful person 
would so judge, which after all would be a eratuitous 
invention. ‘The Acts of the Apostles give us many 
speeches which set forth the grounds of accepting Jesus 


THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 49 


as Messiah; but they never press his absolute moral 
perfection as a fact and a fundamental fact. “He 
went about doing good, and healing all that were op- 
pressed of the devil,” is the utmost that is advanced on 
this side: prophecy is urged, and his resurrection is as- 
serted, and the inference is drawn that “Jesus is the 
Christ.” Out of this flowed the further inferences that 
he was Supreme Judge, — and moreover, was Paschal 
Lamb, and Sacrifice, and High-priest, and Mediator ; 
and since every one of these characters demanded a 
belief in his moral perfections, that doctrine also neces- 
sarily followed, and was received before our present 
Gospels existed. My friend therefore cannot abash me 
by the argumentum ad verecundiam ; (which to me 
seems highly out of place in this connection ;) for the 
opinion, which is, as to this single point, held by him in 
common with the first Christians, was held by them on 
transcendental reasons, which he totally discards; and 
all after-generations have been confirmed in the doc- 
trine by Authority, i. e. by the weight of texts or 
church decisions: both of which he also discards. If I 
could receive the doctrine, merely because I dared not 
to differ from the whole Christian world, I might aid 
to swell odium against rejecters, but I should not 
strengthen the cause at the bar of reason. I feel, there- 
fore, that my friend must not claim Catholicity as on 
his side. ‘Trinitarians and Arians are alike useless to 
his argument: nay, nor can he claim more than a 
small fraction of Unitarians; for as many of them as 
believe that Jesus is to be the Judge of living and dead 
(as the late Dr. Lant Carpenter did) must as necessa- 
rily believe his immaculate perfection as if they were 
Trinitarians. 

The New Testament does not distinctly explain on 


what grounds this doctrine was believed; but we may 
5 


50 THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 


observe that in 1 Peter i. 19 and 2 Cor. v. 21 it is 
coupled with the Atonement, and in 1 Peter ii. 21, Ro- 
mans xv. 3, it seems to be inferred from prophecy. 
But let us turn to the original Eleven, who were eye 
and ear witnesses of Jesus, and consider on what 
grounds they can have believed (if we assume that 
they did all believe) the absolute moral perfection of 
Jesus. It is too ridiculous to imagine them studying 
the writings of Matthew in order to obtain conviction, 
—if any of that school, whom alone I now address, 
could admit that written documents were thought of be- 
fore the Church outstepped the limits of Judea. If the 
Eleven believed the doctrine for some transcendental 
reason, —as by a Supernatural Revelation, or on ac- 
count of Prophecy, and to complete the Messiah’s char- 
acter, —then their attestation is useless to my friend’s 
argument: will it then gain anything, if we suppose 
that they believed Jesus to be perfect, because they saw 
him to be perfect? To me this would seem no attes-. 
tation worth having, but rather a piece of impertinent 
ignorance. If I attest that a person whom I have. 
known was an eminently good man, I command a cer- 
tain amount of respect to my opinion, and I do him 
honor. If I celebrate his good deeds and report his 
wise words, I extend his honor still further. But if 1 
proceed:to assure people, on the evidence of my personal 
observation of him, that he was immaculate and abso- 
lutely perfect, was the pure Moral Image of God, — that 
he deserves to be made the Exclusive Model of imitation, 
and is the standard by which every other man’s moral- 
ity is to be corrected, —I make myself ridiculous; my 
panegyrics lose all weight, and I produce far less con- 
viction than when I praised within human limitations. 
I do not know how my friend will look on this point, 
(for his judgment on the whole question perplexes me, 


THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 51 


and the views which I call sober he names prosaic,) 
but I cannot resist the conviction, that universal com- 
mon sense would have rejected the teaching of the 
Kleven with contempt, if they had presented, as the 
basis of the Gospel, their personal testimony to the god- 
like and unapproachable moral absolutism of Jesus. 
But even if such a basis was possible to the Eleven, it 
was impossible to Paul and Silvanus and Timothy and 
Barnabas and Apollos, and the other successful preach- 
ers to the Gentiles. High moral goodness, within hu- 
man limitations, was undoubtedly announced as a fact 
of the life of Jesus; but upon this followed the super- 
natural claims, and the argument of prophecy; without 
which my friend desires to build up his view. — I have 
thus developed why I think he has no right to claim 
Catholicity for his judgment. TI have risked to be tedi- 
ous, because I find that, when I speak concisely, I am 
enormously misapprehended. I close this topic by ob- 
serving, that the great animosity with which my very 
mild intimations against the popular view have been 
met from numerous quarters, shows me that Christians 
do not allow this subject to be calmly debated, and 
have not come to their own conclusion as the result of 
a calm debate. And this is amply corroborated by my 
own consciousness of the past. I never dared, nor 
could have dared, to criticize coolly and simply the pre- 
tensions of Jesus to be an absolute model of morality, 
until I had been delivered from the weight of authority 
and miracle, oppressing my critical powers. 

III. I have been asserting, that he who believes Je- 
sus to be a mere man ought at once to believe his 
moral excellence finite, and comparable to that of other 
men; and that our judgment to this effect cannot be 
reasonably overborne by the “universal consent” of 
Christendom. — Thus far we are dealing a priori, 


52 THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 


which here fully satisfies me: in such an argument I 
need no @ posteriori evidence to arrive at my own con- 
clusion. Nevertheless, I am met by taunts and clam- 
or, which are not meant to be indecent, but which to 
my feeling are such. My critics point triumphantly to 
the four Gospels, and demand that I will make a per- 
sonal attack on a character which they revere, even 
when they know that I cannot do so without giving 
great offence. Now if any one were to call my old 
schoolmaster, or my old parish priest, a perfect and 
universal Model, and were to claim that I would entitle 
him Lord, and think of him as the only true revelation 
ef God, should I not be at liberty to say, without dis- 
respect, that “I most emphatically deprecate such ex- 
travagant claims for him”? ‘Would this: justify an 
outcry, that I will publicly avow what I judge to be his 
defects of character, and will prove to all his admirers 
that he was a sinner like other men? Such a demand 
would be thought, I believe, highly unbecoming and 
extremely unreasonable. May not my modesty, or my 
regard for his memory, or my unwillingness to pain his 
family, be accepted as sufficient reasons for silence? or 
would any one scoflingly attribute my reluctance to at- 
tack him, to my conscious inability to make good my 
case against his being “ God manifest in the flesh”? 
Now what if one of his admirers had written panegyr- 
ical memorials of him; and his character, therein de- 
scribed, was so faultless, that a stranger to him was 
not able to descry any moral defect whatever in it? Is 
such a stranger bound to believe him to be the Divine 
Standard of morals, unless he can put his finger on 
certain passages of the book which imply weaknesses 
and faults? And is it insulting a man, to refuse to 
worship him? I utterly protest against every such 
pretence. As I have an infinitely stronger conviction 


THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 53 


that Shakespeare was not in intellect Divinely and 
Unapproachably perfect, than that I can certainty point 
out in him some definite intellectual defect; as, more- 
over, I am vastly more sure that Socrates was morally 
imperfect, than that I am able to censure him rightly ; 
so also, a disputant who concedes to me that Jesus is 
a mere man has no right to claim that I will point out 
some moral flaw to him, or else acknowledge him to 
be a Unique Unparalleled Divine Soul. It is true, I 
do see defects, and very serious ones, in the character 
of Jesus, as drawn by his disciples; but I cannot ad- 
mit that my right to disown the pretensions made for 
him turns on my ability to define his frailties. As long 
as (in common with my friend) I regard Jesus as a 
man, so long I hold with dogmatic and inténse convic- 
tion the inference that he was morally imperfect, and 
ought not to be held up as unapproachable in good- 
ness; but I have, in comparison, only a modest belief 
that I am able to show Mis points of weakness. 

While, therefore, in obedience to this call, which has 
risen from many quarters, I think it right not to refuse 
the odious task pressed upon me, — I yet protest that 
my conclusion does not depend upon it. I might cen- 
sure Socrates unjustly, or at least without convincing 
my readers, if I attempted that task; but my failure 
would not throw a feather’s weight i the argument 
that Socrates was a Divine Unique and Universal 
Model. . If I write now what is painful to readers, I 
beg them to remember that I write with much reluc- 
tance, and that it is their own fault if they read. 

In approaching this subject, the first difficulty is, to 
know how much of the four Gospels to accept as fact. 
If we could believe the whole, it would be easier to ar- 
gue; but my friend Martineau (with me) rejects belief 
of many parts: for instance, he has but a very feeble 

5* 


54 THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 


conviction that Jesus ever spoke the discourses attrib- 
uted to him in John’s Gospel. If, therefore, | were to 
found upon these some imputation of moral weakness, 
he “vould reply, that we are agreed in setting these 
aside, as untrustworthy. Yet he perseveres in assert- 
ing that it is beyond all reasonable question what Jesus 
was; as though proven inaccuracies in all the narra-. 
tives did not make the results uncertain. He says that 
even the poor and uneducated are fully impressed with 
“the majesty and sanctity” of Christ’s mind; as if 
this were what I am fundamentally denying; and not, 
only so far as would transcend the known limits of hu- 
man nature: surely “majesty and sanctity” are not 
inconsistent with many weaknesses. But our judg- 
ment concerning a man’s motives, his. temper, and his 
full conquest over self, vanity, and impulsive passion, 
depends on the accurate knowledge of a vast variety 
of minor points; even the curl of the lip, or the discord 
of eye and mouth, may chang@ our moral judgment of 
a man; while alike to my friend and me it is certain 
that much of what is stated is untrue. Much, more- 
over, of what he holds to be untrue does not seem so to 
any but to the highly educated. In spite, therefore, of 
his able reply, I abide in my opinion that he is unrea- 
sonably endeavoring to erect what is essentially a piece 
of doubtful biography and difficult literary criticism 
into first-rate religious importance. 

I shall, however, try to pick up a few details which 
seem, as much as any, to deserve credit, concerning the 
pretensions, doctrine, and conduct of Jesus. 

First, I believe that he habitually spoke of himself 
by the title Son of Man,—a fact which pervades all 
the accounts, and was likely to rivet itself on his hear- 
ers. Nobody but he himself ever calls him Son of 
Man. : 


THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 55 


Secondly, I believe that in assuming this title he tacit- 
ly alluded to the seventh chapter of Daniel, and claimed 
for himself the throne of judgment over all mankind. — 
I know no reason to doubt that he actually delivered 


(in substance) the discourse in Matthew xxv.: “ When 
the Son of Man shall come in his glory, ..... before 
him shall be gathered all nations,.....and he shall 


separate them,” é&c., &c.; and I believe that by the 
Son of Man and the King he meant himself. Compare 
Luke xii. 40, ix. 56. 

Thirdly, 1 believe ‘that he habitually assumed the 
authoritative dogmatic tone of one who was a univer- 
sal Teacher in moral and spiritual matters, and enun- 
ciated as a primary duty of men to learn submissively 
of his wisdom and acknowledge his supremacy. This 
element in his character, the preaching of himself, is 
enormously expanded in the fourth Gospel, but it dis- 
tinctly exists in Matthew. Thus in Matthew xxiii. 8: 
“Be not ye called Rabbi [teacher], for one is your 
Teacher, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.” — 
-Matthew x. 32: “ Whosoever shall confess me before 
men, him will I confess before my Father which is in 
MeaVers iS). wk He that loveth father or mother more 
than mE is not worthy of mz,’ &c.— Matthew xi. 
27: “ All things are delivered unto me of my Father; 
and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither 
knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to 
whomsoever the Son will reveal him. Come unto mr, 
all ye that labor,.. and I will give yourest. Take 
my yoke upon you,” &c. 

My friend, I find, rejects Jesus as an authoritative 
teacher, distinctly denies that the acceptance of Jesus 
in this character is any condition of salvation and of 
the Divine favor, and treats of my “demand of an orac- 
ular Christ” as inconsistent with my own principles. 


56 THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 


But this is mere misconception of what I have said. I 
find Jesus himself to set up oracular claims. I find an 
assumption of preéminence and unapproachable moral 
wisdom to pervade every discourse, from end to end of 
the Gospels. If I may not believe that Jesus assumed 
an oracular manner, I do not know what moral peculi- 
arity in him I am permitted to believe. I do not de- 
mand (as my friend seems to think) that he shall be 
oracular, but, in common with all Christendom, I open 
my eyes and see that he is; and until I had read my 
friend’s review of my book, I never understood (I sup- 
pose through my own prepossessions) that he holds Je- 
sus not to have assumed the oracular style. 

If I cut out from the four Gospels this peculiarity, I 
must cut out, not only the claim of Messiahship, which 
my friend admits to have been made, but nearly every 
moral discourse and every controversy: and why? ex- 
cept in order to make good a predetermined belief that 
Jesus was morally perfect. What reason can be given 
me for not believing that Jesus declared, “If any one 
deny me before men, him will I deny before my Father 
and his angels”? or any of the other texts which 
couple the favor of God with a submission to such pre- 
tensions of Jesus? I can find no reason whatever for 
doubting that he preached uimsELr to his disciples, 
though in the first three Gospels he is rather timid of do- 
ing this to the Pharisees and to the nation at large. I 
find him uniformly to claim, sometimes in tone, some- 
times in distinct words, that we will sit at his feet as 
little children and learn of him. I find him ready to an- 
swer off-hand all difficult questions, critical and lawyer- 
like, as well as moral. ‘True, it is no tenet of mine that 
intellectual and literary attainment is essential in an in- 
dividual person to high spiritual eminence. True, in 
another book I have elaborately maintained the contra- 


THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 57 


ry. Yet in that book I have described men’s spiritual 
progress as.often arrested at a certain stage by a want 
of intellectual development; which surely would indi- 
cate that I believed even intellectual blunders and an in- 
finitely perfect exhaustive morality to be incompatible. 
But our question here (or at least my question) is not 
whether Jesus might misinterpret prophecy, and yet be 
morally perfect; but whether, after assuming to be an 
oracular teacher, he can teach some fanatical precepts, 
aifd advance dogmatically weak and foolish argu- 
ments, without impairing our sense of his absolute 
moral perfection. 

I do not think it useless here to repeat (though not 
for my friend) concise reasons which I gave in my first 
edition against admitting dictatorial claims for Jesus. 
First, it is an unplausible opinion that God would de- 
viate from his ordinary course, in order to give us any 
thing so undesirable as an authoritative Oracle would 
be ;— which would paralyze our moral powers, exactly 
as an infallible church does, in the very proportion in 
which we succeeded in eliciting responses from it. It 
is not needful here to repeat what has been said to that 
effect in p. 138. Secondly, there is no imaginable cri- 
terion, by which we can establish that the wisdom of a 
teacher ts absolute and illimitable. All that we can 
possibly discover is the relative fact, that another is 
wiser than we; and even this is liable to be overturned 
on special points, as soon as differences of judgment 
arise. Thirdly, while it is by no means clear what are 
the new truths, for which we are to lean upon the de- 
cisions of Jesus, it is certain that we have no genuine 
and trustworthy account of his teaching. If God had 
intended us to receive the authoritative dicta of Jesus, 
he would have furnished us with an unblemished record 
of those dicta. 'To allow that we have not this, and 


58 THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 


that we must disentangle for ourselves (by a most difh- 
cult and uncertain process) the “true” sayings of 
Jesus, is surely self-refuting. Fourthly, if I must sit in 
judgment on the claims of Jesus to be the true Messiah 
and Son of God, how can I concentrate all my free 
thought into that one act, and thenceforth abandon free 
thought? This appears a moral suicide, whether Mes- 
siah or the Pope is the object whom we first criticize, 
in order to install him over us, and then, for ever after, 
refuse to criticize. In short, we cannot butld up a sis- 
tem of Oracles on a basis of Free Criticism. Uwe are 
to submit our judgment to the dictation of some other, 
— whether a church or an individual,— we must be 
first subjected to that other by some event from with- 
out, as by birth; and not by a process of that very 
judgment which is*henceforth to be sacrificed. But 
from this I proceed to consider more in detail some 
points in the teaching and conduct of Jesus, which do 
not appear to me consistent with absolute perfection. 

The argument of Jesus concerning the tribute to Ca-_ 
sar is so dramatic, as to strike the imagination and rest 
on the memory; and I know no reason for doubting 
that it has been correctly reported. The book of Deu- 
teronomy (xvii. 15) distinctly forbids Israel to set over 
himself as king any who is not a native Israelite ; 
which appeared to be a religious condemnation of sub- 
mission to Cesar. Accordingly, since Jesus assumed 
the tone of unlimited wisdom, some of Herod’s party 
asked him, whether it was lawful to pay tribute to Ce- 
sar. Jesus replied: “ Why tempt ye me, hypocrites ? 
Show me the tribute-money.” When one of the coins 
was handed to him, he asked, “ Whose image and su- 
perscription is this?” When they replied, “ Ceesar’s,” 
he gave his authoritative decision: “ Render therefore 
to Cesar the things that are Cesar’s.” 


THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 59 


In this reply, not only the poor and uneducated, but 
many likewise of the rich and educated, recognize 
“majesty and sanctity”: yet I find it hard to think 
that my strong-minded friend will defend the justness, 
wisdom, and honesty of it. To imagine that, because a 
coin bears Cesar’s head, therefore it is Ceesar’s prop- 
erty, and that he may demand to have as many of such 
coins as he chooses paid over to him, is puerile, and 
notoriously false. The circulation of foreign coin of 
every kind was as common in the Mediterranean then 
as now; and everybody knew that the coin was the 
property of the holder, not of him whose head it bore. 
Thus the reply of Jesus, which pretended to be a moral 
decision, was unsound and absurd: yet it is uttered in 
a tone of dictatorial wisdom, and ushered in by a grave 
rebuke, “ Why tempt ye me, hypocrites?” He is gen- 
erally understood to mean, “ Why do you try to impli- 
cate me in a political charge?” and it is supposed that 
he prudently evaded the question. Ihave indeed heard 
this interpretation from high Trinitarians; which indi- 
cates to me how dead is their moral sense in everything 
which concerns the conduct of Jesus. No reason ap- 
pears why he should not have replied, that Moses for- 
_ bade Israel voluntarily to place himself under a foreign 
king, but did not inculcate fanatical and useless rebel- 
lion against overwhelming power. But such a reply, 
which would have satisfied a more commonplace mind, 
has in it nothing brilliant and striking. I cannot but 
think that Jesus shows a vain conceit in the cleverness 
of his answer: I do not think it so likely to have been 
a conscious evasion. But neither does his rebuke of 
the questioners at all commend itself to me. How can 
any man assume to be an authoritative teacher, and 
then claim that men shall not put his wisdom to the 
proof? Was it not their duty to do so? And when, 


60 THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 


in result, the trial has preved the defect of his wisdom, 
did they not perform a useful public service? In truth, 
I cannot see the Model Man in his rebuke. — Let not 
my friend say that the error was merely intellectual: 
blundering self-sufficiency is a moral weakness. 

I might go into detail concerning other discourses, 
where error and arrogance appear to me combined. 
But not to be tedious, in general I must complain 
that Jesus purposely adopted an enigmatical and pre- 
tentious style of teaching, unintelligible to his hearers, 
and needing explanation in private. That this was his 
systematic procedure, I believe, because, in spite of the 
ereat contrast of the fourth Gospel to the others, it has 
this peculiarity in common with them. Christian di- 
vines are used to tell us that this mode was peculiarly 
instructive to the vulgar of Judeea; and they insist on 
the great wisdom displayed in his choice of the lucid 
parabolical style. But in Matthew xiii. 10-15, Jesus 
is made confidentially to avow precisely the opposite 
reason, viz. that he desires the vulgar not to understand 
him, but only the select few to whom he gives private 
explanations. I confess I believe the Evangelist rather 
than the modern divine. I cannot conceive how so 
strange a notion could ever have possessed the com- . 
panions of Jesus, if it had not been true. If really this 
parabolical method had been peculiarly intelligible, 
what could make them imagine the contrary? Unless 
they found it very obscure themselves, whence came 
the idea that it was obscure to the multitude? As a 
fact, it.is very obscure, to this day. There is much that 
I most imperfectly understand, owing to unexplained 
metaphor: as, “ Agree with thine adversary quickly,” 
&e., &c. “ Whoso calls his brother* a fool, is in dan- 


* Tam acquainted with the interpretation, that the word Méré is not here 


THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 61 


ger of hell-fire.” “ Kvery one must be salted with fire, 
and every sacrifice salted with salt. Have salt in your- 
selves, and be at peace with one another.” Now every 
man of original and singular genius has his own forms 
of thought; in so far as they are natural, we must not 
complain, if to us they are obscure. But the moment 
affectation comes in, they no longer are reconcilable 
with the perfect character: they indicate vanity, and 
incipient sacerdotalism. The distinct notice that Jesus 
avoided to expound his parables to the multitude, and 
made this a boon to the privileged few ; and that with- 
out a parable he spake not to the multitude; and the 
pious explanation, that this was a fulfilment of Proph- 
ecy, “I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter 
dark sayings on the harp,” — persuade me that the im- 
pression of the disciplesewas a deep reality. And it is 
in entire keeping with the general narrative, which 
shows in him so much of mystical assumption. Strip 
the parables of the imagery, and you find that some- 
times one thought has been dished up four or five 
times, and generally, that an idea is dressed into sacred 
grandeur. ‘This mystical method made a little wisdom 
go a great way with the multitude; and to such a 
mode of economizing resources the instinct of the un- 
educated man betakes itself, when he is claiming to act 
a part for which he is imperfectly prepared. 

It is common with orthodox Christians to take for 
granted, that unbelief of Jesus was a sin, and belief a 
merit, at a time when no rational grounds of belief 
were as yet public. Certainly, whoever asks questions 
with a view to prove Jesus, is spoken of vituperatingly 
in the Gospels; and it does appear to me that the prev- 


Greek, i. e. fool, but is Hebrew, and means rebel, which is stronger than 
Raca, silly fellow. This gives partial, but only partial relief. 
6 


62 THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 


alent Christian belief is a true echo of Jesus’s own 
feeling. He disliked being put to the proof. Instead 
of rejoicing in it, as a true and upright man ought, — 
instead of blaming those who accept his pretensions on 
too slight grounds,—instead of encouraging full in- 
quiry and giving frank explanations, he resents doubt, 
shuhs everything that will test him, is very obscure as' 
to his own pretensions, (so as to need probing and pos- 
itive questions, whether he does or does not profess to 
be Messiah,) and yet is delighted at all easy belief. 
When asked for miracles, he sighs and groans at the 
unreasonableness of it; yet does not honestly and 
plainly renounce pretension to miracle, as Mr. Marti- 
neau would, but leaves room for credit to himself for as 
many miracles as the credulous are willing to impute 
to him. It is possible that here the narrative is unjust 
to his memory. So far from being the picture of per- 
fection, it sometimes seems to me the picture of a con- 
scious and wilful impostor. His general character is 
too high for this ; and I therefore make deductions from 
the account. Still, I do not see how the present narra- 
tive could have grown up, if he had been really simple 
and straightforward, and not perverted by his essen- 
tially false position. Enigma and mist seem to be his 
element; and when I find his high satisfaction at all | 
personal recognition and bowing before his individual- 
ity, I almost doubt whether, if one wished to draw the 
character of a vain and vacillating pretender, it would 
be possible to draw anything more to the purpose than 
this. His general rule (before a certain date) is to be 
cautious in public, but bold in private to the favored 
few. I cannot think that such a character, appearing 
now, would seem to my friend a perfect model of a 
man. * | 

No precept bears on ite face clearer marks of coming 


THE MORAL ‘PERFECTION OF JESUS. 63 


from the genuine Jesus, than that of selling all and fol- 
lowing him. ‘This was his original call to his disciples. 
It was enunciated authoritatively on various occasions. 
It is incorporated with precepts of perpetual obligation, 
in such a way, that we cannot without the greatest 
violence pretend that he did not intend it as a precept * 
to all his disciples. In Luke xii. 22-40, he addresses 
the disciples collectively against Avarice; and a part 
of the discourse is: “ Fear not, little flock; for it is 
your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 
Sell that ye have, and give alms: provide yourselves 
bags that wax not old; a treasure in the heavens that 
faileth not, &c...... Let your loins be girded about, 
and your lights burning,” &c. ‘To say that he was not 
intending to teach a universal morality,f is to admit 
that his precepts are a trap; for they then mix up and 
confound mere contingent duties with universal sacred 
obligations, enunciating all in the same breath, and 
with the same solemnity. I cannot think that Jesus 
intended any separation. In fact, when a rich young 
man asked of him what he should do, that he might 
inherit eternal life, and pleaded that he had kept the 
ten commandments, but felt that to be insufficient, Je- 


* Indeed, we have in Luke vi. 20-24 a version of the Beatitudes so 
much in harmony with this lower doctrine, as to make it an open question, 
whether the version in Matthew v. is not an improvement upon Jesus, in- 
troduced by the purer sense of the collective Church. In Luke, he does 
not bless the poor in spirit, and those who hunger after righteousness, but 
absolutely the “ poor” and the “ hungry,” and all who honor Him; and, in 
contrast, curses the rich and those who are full. 

+ At the close is the parable about the absent master of a house; and 
Peter asks, “Lord! (Sir!) speakest thou this parable unto us, or also unto 
all?” Who would not have hoped an ingenuous reply, “To you only,” 
or, “ To everybody”? Instead of which, so inveterate is his tendency to 
muffle up the simplest things in mystery, he replies, “‘ Who then is that 
faithful and wise steward,” &c., &c., and entirely evades reply to the very 


~ natural question. 


64 THE MORAL ‘PERFECTION OF JESUS. 


sus said unto him: “ If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell 
that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt 
have treasure in heaven!” so that the duty was not 
contingent upon the peculiarity of a man possessing 
apostolic gifts, but was with Jesus the normal path for 
all who desired perfection. When the young man 
went away sorrowing, Jesus moralized on it, saying: 
“ How hardly shall a rich man enter into the kingdom 
of heaven!” which again shows, that an abrupt renun- 
ciation of wealth was to be the general and ordinary 
method of entering the kingdom. Hereupon, when the 
disciples asked: “Lo! we have forsaken all, and fol- 
lowed thee: what shall we have therefore?” Jesus, 
instead of rebuking their self-righteousness, promised 
them as a reward, that they should sit upon twelve* 
thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. <A precept 
thus systematically enforced is illustrated by the prac- 
tice, not only of the Twelve, but apparently of the Sev- 
enty, and what is stronger still, by the practice of the 
five thousand disciples after the celebrated days of the 
first Pentecost. ‘There was no longer a Jesus on earth 

to itinerate with, yet the disciples in the fervor of first 
~ Jove obeyed his precept: the rich sold their possessions, 
and laid the price at the Apostles’ feet. 

The mischiefs inherent in such a precept rapidly 
showed themselves, and good sense corrected the error. 
But this very fact proves most emphatically that the 
precept was pre-apostolic, and came from the genuine 
Jesus; otherwise it could never have found its way into 
the Gospels. It is undeniable, that the first disciples, 
by whose tradition alone we have any record of what 
Jesus taught, understood him to deliver this precept to 
all who desired to enter into the kingdom of heaven, — 


* This implied that Judas, as one of the twelve, had earned the heavenly 
throne by the price of earthly goods. © 


— 


weigh “gs 


THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 65 


all who desired to be perfect: why, then, are we to re- 
fuse belief, and remould the precepts of Jesus till they 
please our own morality? ‘This is not the way to 
learn historical fact. | 

That to inculcate religious beggary as the only form 
and mode of spiritual perfection is fanatical and mis- 
chievous, even the Church of Rome will admit. Prot- 
estants universally reject it as a deplorable absurdity ; 
—not merely wealthy bishops, squires, and merchants, 
but the poorest curate also. A man could not preach 
such doctrine in a Protestant pulpit without incurring . 
deep reprobation and contempt; but when preached 
by Jesus, it is extolled as divine wisdom, —and diso- 
beyed. 

Now I can look on this as a pure intellectual error, 
consistent with moral perfection. A deep mistake as 
to the nature of such perfection seems to me inherent 
in the precept itself; a mistake which indicates a 
moral unsoundness. The conduct of Jesus to the rich 
young man appears to me a melancholy exhibition of — 
perverse doctrine, under an ostentation of superior wis- 
dom. The young man asked for bread, and Jesus gave 
him a stone. Justly he went away sorrowful, at re- 
ceiving a reply which his conscience rejected as false 
and foolish. Butthisisnotall. Jesus was necessarily 
on trial, when any one, however sincere, came to ask 
questions so deeply probing the quality of his wisdom 
as this: “ How may I be perfect?” and to be on trial 


_ was always disagreeable to him. He first gave the re- 


ply, “Keep the commandments”; and if the young 
man had been satisfied, and had gone away, it appears 
that Jesus would have been glad to be rid of him; for 
his tone is magisterial, decisive, and final. This, I 
confess, suggests to me, that the aim of Jesus was not 


so much to enlighten the young man, as to stop his 
Gs 


66 THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 


mouth, and keep up his own ostentation of omnis- 
cience. Had he desired to enlighten him, surely no 
mere dry dogmatic command was needed, but an in- 
telligent guidance of a willing and trusting soul. 1 
do not pretend to certain knowledge in these matters. 
Even when we hear the tones of voice and watch the 
features, we often mistake. "We have no such means 
here of checking the narrative. But the best general 
result which I can draw from the imperfect materials 
is what I have said. 

After the merit of “selling all and following Jesus,” 
a second merit, not small, was to receive those whom 
he sent. In Matthew x., we read that he sends out his 
twelve disciples, (also seventy in Luke,) men at that 
time in a very low state of religious development, — 
men who did not themselves know what the Kingdom 
of Heaven meant,—to deliver in every village and 
town a mere formula of words: “Repent ye; for the 
Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” ‘They were ordered 
to go without money, scrip, or cloak, but to live on re- 
ligious alms; and it is added, that if any house or 
city does not receive them, 7 shall be more tolerable for 
Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment than for 
it. He adds, ver. 40: “ He that receiveth you, receiveth | 
me, and he that receiveth me, receiveth Him that sent 
me.” — I quite admit, that in all probability it was (on 
the whole) the more pious part of Israel which was 
likely to receive these ignorant missionaries ; but inas- _ 
much as they had no claims whatever, intrinsic or ex- 
trinsic, to reverence, it appears to me a very extrava- 
gant and fanatical sentiment thus emphatically to 
couple the favor or wrath of God with their reception 
or rejection. 

A third, yet greater merit in the eyes of Jesus was, 
to acknowledge him as the Messiah predicted by the 


THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 67 


prophets, which he was not, according to my friend. 
According to Matthew (xvi. 13), Jesus put leading 
questions to the disciples in order to elicit a confession 
of his Messiahship, and emphatically blessed Simon 
for making the avowal which he desired; but instantly 
forbade them to tell the great secret to any one. Un- 
less this is to be discarded as fiction, Jesus, although to 
his disciples in secret he confidently assumed Messianic 
pretensions, had a just inward misgiving, which ac- 
counts both for his elation at Simon’s avowal, and for 
his prohibition to publish it. 

In admitting that Jesus was not the Messiah of the 
prophets, my friend says, that, if Jesus were less than 
Messiah, we can reverence him no longer; but that he 
was more than Messiah. This is to me unintelligible. 
The Messiah whom he claimed to be was not only the 
son of David, celebrated in the prophets, but emphati- 
cally the Son of Man of Daniel vii., who shall come in 


the clouds of heaven, to take dominion, glory, and king- 


dom, that all people, nations, and languages shall serve 
him,—an everlasting kingdom which shall not pass 
away. How Jesus himself interprets his supremacy, as 
Son of Man, in Matthew x., xi., XxilL, XXv., and elsewhere, 
I have already observed. ‘To claim such a character 
seems to me like plunging from a pinnacle of the tem- 
ple. If miraculous power holds him up and makes 
good his daring, he is more than man; but if other- 
wise, to have failed will break all his bones. I can no 
longer give the same human reverence as before to one 
who has been seduced into vanity so egregious; and I 
feel assured @ priori that such presumption must have 
entangled him into evasions and insincerities, which 
naturally end in crookedness of conscience and real 
imposture, however noble a man’s commencement, and 
however unshrinking his sacrifices of goods and ease 


an life. 
. 


68 THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 


The time arrived at last, when Jesus felt that he 
must publicly assert Messiahship ; and this was certain 
to bring things to an issue. I suppose him to have 
hoped that he was Messiah, until hope and the en- 
couragement given him by Peter and others grew into 
a persuasion strong enough to act upon, but not al- 
ways strong enough to still misgivings. I say, I sup- 
pose this;“but I build nothing on my supposition. I 
however see, that when he had resolved to claim 
Messiahship publicly, one of two results was inevita- 
ble, if that claim was ill-founded;—viz. either he 
must have become an impostor, in order to screen his 
weakness; or he must have retracted his pretensions 
amid much humiliation, and have retired into privacy 
to learn sober wisdom. From these alternatives there 
was escape only by death, and upon death Jesus pur- 
posely rushed. 

All Christendom has always believed that the death 
of Jesus was voluntarily incurred; and unless no man 
ever became a wilful martyr, I cannot conceive why we > 
are to doubt the fact concerning Jesus. When he re- 
solved to go up to Jerusalem, he was warned by his 
disciples of the danger; but so far was he from being 
blind to it, that he distinctly announced to them that 
he knew he should suffer in Jerusalem the shameful 
death of a. malefactor. . On his arrival in the suburbs, 
his first act was ostentatiously to ride into the city on 
an ass’s colt, in the midst of the acclamations of the 
multitude, in order to exhibit himself as having a just 
right to the throne of David. Thus he gave a handle 
to imputations of intended treason.— He next entered 
the temple courts, where doves and lambs were sold for 
sacrifice, and — (I must say it to my friend’s amuse- 
ment, and in defiance of his kind but keen ridicule) — 
committed a breach of the peace by flogging with a 


* 


THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 69 


whip those who trafficked in the area. By such con- 
duct he undoubtedly made himself liable to legal 
punishment, and probably might have been publicly 
scourged for it, had the rulers chosen to moderate their 
vengeance. But he “meant to be prosecuted for trea- 
son, not for felony,’ to use the words of a modern 
offender. He therefore commenced the most exasper- 
ating attacks on all the powerful, calling them hypo- 
crites and whited-sepulchres and vipers’ brood; an 

denouncing upon them the “condemnation of hell.” 
He was successful. He had both enraged the rulers 
up to the point of thirsting for his life, and given color 
to the charge of political rebellion. He resolved to 
die; and he died. Had his enemies contemptuously 
let him live, he would have been forced to act the part 
of Jewish Messiah, or renounce Messiahship. 

If any one holds Jesus to be not amenable to the 
laws of human morality, [am not now reasoning with 
such a one. But if any one claims for him a human 
perfection, then I say that his conduct on this occasion 
was neither laudable nor justifiable; far otherwise. 
There are cases in which life may be thrown away for 
a great cause; as when a leader in battle rushes upon 
certain death, in order to animate his own men; but 
the case before us has no similarity to that. If our 
accounts are not wholly false, Jesus knowingly and 
purposely exasperated the rulers into a great crime, — 
the crime of taking his life from personal resentment. 
His inflammatory addresses to the multitude have been 
defended as follows :— ; 

«The prophetic Spirit is sometimes oblivious of the 
rules of the drawing-room ; and inspired Conscience, like 
the inspiring God, seeing a hypocrite, will take the lib- 
erty to say so, and act accordingly. Are the superficial 
amenities, the soothing fictions, the smotherings of the 


70 THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 


burning heart,..... really paramount in this world, 
and never to give way? and when a soul of power, 
unable to refrain, rubs off, though it be with rasping 
words, all the varnish from rottenness and lies, is he to 
be tried in our ‘courts of compliment for a misde- 
meanor? Is there never a higher duty than that of 
either pitying or converting guilty men, —the duty of 
publicly exposing them? of awakening the popular 
conscience, and sweeping away the conventional timid- 
ities, for a severe return to truth and reality? No rule 
of morals can be recognized as just, which prohibits 
conformity of human speech to fact, and insists on 
terms of civility being kept with all manner of in- 
iquity.” 

I certainly have not appealed to any conventional 
morality of drawing-room compliment, but to the high- 
est and purest principles which I know; and I lament 
to find my judgment so extremely in opposition. To 
me it seems that inability to refrain shows weakness, 
not power, of soul, and that nothing is easier than to 
give vent to violent invective against bad rulers. The 
last sentence quoted seems to say, that the speaking 
of Truth is never to be condemned: but I cannot agree 
to this. When Truth will only exasperate, and can- 
not do good, silence is imperative. A man who re- 
proaches an armed tyrant in words too plain, does but 
excite him to murder; and the shocking thing is, that 
this seems to have been the express Baye of Jesus. 
No good result could be reasonably expected. Publicly 
to call men in authority by names of intense insult, 
the writer of the above distinctly sees, will never con- 
vert them; but he thinks it was adapted to awaken 
the popular conscience. Alas! it needs no divine 
prophet to inflame a multitude against the avarice, 
hypocrisy, and oppression of rulers, nor any deep in- 


THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 71 


spiration of conscience in the multitude to be wide 
awake on that point themselves. A Publius Clodius 
or a Cleon will do that work as efficiently as a Jesus; 
nor does it appear that the poor are made better by 
hearing invectives against the rich and powerful. If 
Jesus had been aiming, in a good cause, to excite re- 
bellion, the mode of address which he assumed seems 
highly appropriate; and in such a calamitous necessity, 
to risk exciting murderous enmity would be the act of 
a hero: but as the account stands, it seems to me the 
deed of a fanatic. And it is to me manifest that he 
overdid his attack, and failed to commend it to the 
conscience of his hearers. For up to thisepoint the 
multitude was in his favor. He was notoriously so 
acceptable to the many, as to alarm the rulers; indeed, 
the belief of his popularity had shielded him from pros- 
ecution. But after this fierce address he has no more 
popular support. At his public trial the vast majority 
judge him to deserve punishment, and prefer to ask 
free forgiveness for Barabbas, a bandit who was in 
prison for murder. We moderns, nursed in an arbitrary 
belief concerning these events, drink in with our first 
milk the assumption that Jesus alone was guiltless, and 
all the other actors in this sad affair inexcusably guilty. 
Let no one imagine that I defend for a moment the 
cruel punishment which raw resentment inflicted on 
him. But though the rulers felt the rage of Vengeance, 
the people, who had suffered no personal wrong, were 
moved only by ill-measured Indignation. The multi- 
tude love to hear the powerful exposed and reproached, 
up to a certain limit; but if reproach go clearly beyond 
all that they feel to be deserved, a violent sentiment 
reacts on the head of the reviler: and though popular 
indignation (even when free from the element of selfish- 
ness) ill fixes the due measure of Punishment, I have 


72 THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 


a strong belief that it is righteous, when it pronounces 
the verdict Guilty. 

Does my friend deny that the death of Jesus was 
wilfully incurred? The “ orthodox” not merely admit, 
but maintain it. Their creed justifies it by the doc- 
trine, that his death was a “sacrifice” so pleasing to 
God as to expiate the sins of the world. This honestly 
meets the objections to self-destruction; for how better 
could life be used, than by laying it down for such a 
prize? But besides all other difficulties in the very 
idea of atonement, the orthodox creed startles us by 
the incredible conception, that a voluntary sacrifice of 
life should be unacceptable to God, unless offered by 
ferocious and impious hands. If Jesus had “ authority 
from the Father to lay down his life,’ was he unable 
to stab himself in the desert, or on the sacred altar of 
the Temple, without involving guilt to any human 
being? Did He, who is at once “ High-priest” and 
Victim, when “offering up himself” and “ presenting 
his own blood unto God,’ need any justification for 
using the sacrificial knife? The orthodox view more 
clearly and unshrinkingly avows, that Jesus deliberately 
goaded the wicked rulers into the deeper wickedness 
of murdering him; but on my friend’s view, that Jesus 
was ”o sacrifice, but only a Model Man, his death is an 
unrelieved calamity. Nothing but a long and com- 
plete life could possibly test the fact of his perfection ; 
and the longer he lived, the better for the world. 

In entire consistency with his previous determina- 
tion to die, Jesus, when arraigned, refused to rebut ac- 
cusation, and behaved as one pleading Guilty. He 
was accused of saying that, if they destroyed the 
temple, he would rebuild it in three days; but how this 
was to the purpose, the Evangelists who name it do not 
make clear. The fourth however (without intending so 


THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 713 


to do) explains it ; and I therefore am disposed to be- 
lieve his statement, though I put no faith in his long 
discourses. It appears (John ii. 18-20) that Jesus, 
after scourging the people out of the temple court, was 
asked for a sign to justify his assuming so very un- 
usual authority: on which he replied, “ Destroy this 
temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Such a 
reply was regarded as a manifest evasion ; since he was 
sure that they would not pull the temple down in order 
to try whether he could raise it up miraculously. Now 
if Jesus really meant what the fourth Gospel says he 
meant, — if he “spoke of the temple of his body,” — 
how was any one to guess that? It cannot be denied, 
that such a reply, prima facie, suggested that he was a 
wilful impostor: was it not then his obvious duty, 
when this accusation was brought against him, to ex- 
plain that his words had been mystical and had been 
misunderstood? The form of the imputation in Mark 
xiv. 58 would make it possible to imagine,—if the 
three days were left out, and if his words were not said 
in reply to the demand of a sign, — that Jesus had 
merely avowed that, though the outward J ewish temple 
were to be destroyed, he would erect a church of wor- 
shippers as a spiritual temple. If so, “ John” has 
grossly misrepresented him, and then obtruded a very 
far-fetched explanation. But whatever was the mean- 
ing of Jesus, if it was honest, I think he was bound to 
explain it; and not leave a suspicion of imposture to 
rankle in men’s minds.* Finally, if the whole were fic- 


*Tf the account in John is not wholly false, I think the reply in every 
case discreditable. If literal, it all but indicates wilful imposture. If mys- 
tical, it is disingenuously evasive ; and it tended, not to instruct, but to ir- 
ritate, and to move suspicion and contempt. Is this the course for a relig- 
ious teacher ? — to speak darkly, so as to mislead and prejudice ; and this, 
when he represents it as a matter of spiritual life and death to accept his 
teaching and his supremacy ? 

4 


74 THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 


tion, and he never uttered such words, then it was his 
duty to deny them, and not remain dumb, like a sheep 
before its shearers. 

After he had confirmed by his silence the belief that 
he had used a dishonest evasion indicative of conscious- 
ness that he was no real Messiah, he suddenly burst 
out with a full reply to the high-priest’s question; and 
avowed that he was the Messiah, the Son of God, and 
that they should hereafter see him sitting on the right 
hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven, — 
of course to enter into judgment on them all. I am 
the less surprised that this precipitated his condemna- 
tion, since he himself seems to have designed precisely 
that result. The exasperation which he had succeeded 
in kindling led to his cruel death; and when men’s 
minds had cooled, natural horror possessed them for 
such a retribution on such a man. His words had 
been met with deeds; the provocation he had given 
was unfelt to those beyond the limits of Jerusalem ; 
and to the Jews who assembled from distant parts at 
the feast of Pentecost, he was nothing but the image of 
a sainted martyr. 

Ihave given more than enough indications of points 
in which the conduct of Jesus does not seem to me to 
have been that of a perfect man: how any one can 
think him a Universal Model, is to me still less intelli- 
gible. I might say much more on this subject. But I 
will merely add, that when my friend gives the weight 
of his noble testimony to the Perfection of Jesus, I 
think it is due to himself and to us that he should 
make clear what he means by this word “Jesus.” He 
ought to publish — (I say it in deep seriousness, not 
sarcastically) —an expurgated Gospel; for in truth I 
do not know how much of what I have now adduced 
from the Gospel as fact, he will admit to be fact. I 


THE MORAL PERFECTION OF JESUS. 15 


neglect, he tells me, “a higher moral criticism,” which, 
if I rightly understand, would explode, as evidently un- 
worthy of Jesus, many of the representations pervading 
the Gospels: as, that Jesus claimed to be an oracular 
teacher, and attached spiritual life or death to belief or 
disbelief in this claim. My friend says, it is beyond all 
serious question what Jesus was: but his disbelief of the 
narrative seems to be so much wider than mine, as to 
leave me more uncertain than ever about it. If he will 
strike out of the Gospels all that he disbelieves, and so 
enable me to understand what is the Jesus whom he 
reveres, I have so deep a sense of his moral and critical 
‘powers, that I am fully prepared to expect that he may 
remove many of my prejudices and relieve my objec- 
tions: but I cannot honestly say that I see the least 
probability of his altering my conviction, that in con- 
sistency of goodness Jesus fell far below vast numbers 
of his unhonored disciples. 


a iE et 


pela . pe ba te i ° ia, . 
pid iA ee ie widen wick 


A DEFENCE 


OF 


“THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH,” 


g 


BY ITS AUTHOR; 


¢ 


_ BEING A REJOINDER TO PROFESSOR NEWMAN'S 
“ REPLY.” 


Sree 
Lene atite che 


Debates Beha ty * 


OR GE TNL ALOE 


Ue Oy 


‘apni 


ay RR 


Me Ee 


SECTION 


i: 
Il. 


ORE 


LV. 


ng 
VI. 


VIUIl. 


CONTENTS. 


INTRODUCTION : “ 2 , P F 


How far I “indorse” Harrington D——’s Argument, and 
whether I believe in an Unmoral Deity : . 


Whether Mr. Newman’s Theory, though he means it not, 
does not involve the Conception of an Immoral Deity 


The Exigencies of Deism . 
Charges of a “Misrepresentation” and “Garbling” 


Whether Mr. Newman’s Distinction of Morally and Spirit- 
ually “ Authoritative” and Morally and abate: “Tn- 
structive” will stand . : : ; : : 


Mr. Newman’s Eclaircissement . : : : ; : 


Showing that Facts are as intractable to the d@ priori Spiritual 
Philosopher as to every other @ priort Philosopher 


Whether the Christian throws away his “ Moral Judgment” 
in accepting the New Testament ° . : - ; 


Whether it be fair in Christians to meet “ Objections” by 
“Objections”  . : : : ‘ . ‘ ee 


Mr. Newman’s Chapter on “The Moral Perfection of Christ” 
Charges of “ Profanity,” and so forth 


Mr. Newman’s Reply to the Notes respecting “ sala ” and 
the “Early Progress of Christianity ” ‘ ‘ 


Some Miscellaneous Topics Bal Ae dA 
A few Words to a Prospective Reviewer ‘ar is 


Conclusion . x ‘ é Z ‘ . 4 : 


APPENDIX : : i : : ; 3 = ; : 


PAGE 


36 


116 


207 


rah wee Fe) 


' 


2 Verh 


7 Veltiagh atty oF ai tad nites wad 


ae 


a ae raulieti i aii my 


DEFENCE 


OF 


“THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


SECTION I. 
INTRODUCTION. 


Proressor Newman, in the recent edition of the 
“ Phases,” has published a brief “ Reply” to “ The 
Eclipse of Faith.’ This book, he tells us, he should 
have preferred “to pass by unnoticed, only that its 
popularity gives it a weight which it has not in it- 
self.”* He also says that his friends expected him to 
answer it. “Save me from my friends” is an excellent 
caution, which an author, above most men, will do 
well to bear in mind. It is almost as wise in such a 
case to listen to one’s enemies. 

My own reasons for noticing the “ Reply” are widely 
different; and one of them imperative. Mr. Newman 
has charged me with “stealthy misrepresentation and 
gross garbling.” No man should allow himself to be 
so charged unjustly, (and I will venture to say that 
no controvertist has a more sincere abhorrence of any 


* Phases. Reply, p. 5. 


<= 


- A DEFENCE OF “THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.’ 


such practices than myself,) without making the accu- 
sation recoil on his calumniator; and this I pledge 
myself to do. Mr. Newman. may rest assured that I 
will reckon with him on all such points, to the utter- 
most syllable. 

But this would occupy only a few of the following 
pages; and I have gone a little further. I have an- 
swered every statement of the least moment which I 
can find in Mr. Newman’s strictures: nor have I con- 
tented myself even with that. I have felt tempted to 
restate the argument of Harrington D , from which 
Mr. Newman so preposterously infers that I believe in. 
an “aunmoral Deity” ;— to make a few remarks on the 
inexplicable explanations and obscure éclaircissements 
of his former statements, respecting the relation of 
man’s religious nature to the external organon which 
develops it, — which last it still seems may, somehow, 
come from man, but cannot come from God;— to 
offer some observations on his new chapter on the 
“ Moral Perfection of Christ,’ — strange mistitle, since 
it is to prove his Moral Imperfection;— and to give 
my young Christian countrymen a few words of coun- 
sel in reference to the Deism of the present day. 
Meantime, in the present section, I will give them an 
opportunity of judging how far they prefer the charity 
of the new spiritualism to that of the New Testament, 
and how far they can trust the “free criticism” which 
asserts the moral deficiencies of Christianity, and the 
moral defects of its Founder. 

Mr. Newman calls his little chapter a “ Reply to ‘ The 
Eclipse of Faith’ ” One would think the whole book 
professed to be formally and exclusively directed against 
him! The slightest inspection of its very various con- 
tents will show that a multitude of topics are taken up 
in which he has no concern in the world; and that his 


GENERAL RELATIONS WITH MY CRITIC. 3 


opinions, like those of Parker, Strauss, and others, were 
introduced, only so far as they affected the particular 
topics under discussion. He is pleased even to say 
that one magical “ sentence,” which I have not allowed 
“Mr. Fellowes to press,” would have sufficed “to crush 
the whole treatise of 450 pages” !* This sentence, so 
far from being neglected, Harrington makes (as I think) 
pretty good use of, only, of course, in a very different 
way. I mention it here merely to show the extravagance 
of Mr. Newman’s assertions; since half at least of the 
volume is occupied with topics which have no reference 
to his peculiar speculations. But it is Mr. Newman’s 
privilege to speak hastily, and to speak largely. 

Again, Mr. Newman seems to suppose that there 
was some special animosity towards him, in selecting 
some of his opinions for comment in “ The Eclipse” 5 


’ if so, he is much mistaken. I felt none then: I may 


add, I feel none now. I had nothing in the world but 
his opinions in view; and I should not have commented 
upon them at all, had he not been a perfect stranger to 
me. Had he been either a friend or an enemy, nay, 
had he been at all known to me, then, as in all cases 
in which I have been impelled by conscience or induced. 
by importunity to enter into controversy (which, what- 
ever Mr. Newman may think, I thoroughly hate), I 
should have refrained from noticing his writings at all; 
since I should have distrusted my own impartiality. It 
was easy to find others. Iselected his writings, because 
I thought that, from their half views and quarter views, 
and sometimes tenth of quarter views, they were likely 
to do mischief among the young. ‘The “ Phases,” in 
particular, appeared likely to have this effect, by that 
volatile transition from subject to subject, and that 


* Reply, p. 35. 


4 A DEFENCE OF “THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 
‘summary and slashing treatment of all, which charac- 
terize that singular book. It seemed likely to leave as 
confused an impression on the mind as those exhibi- 
tions of “dissolving views,” where we see mountains 
and lakes advancing upon us through receding cities 5 
rocks and grottos obtruding into the ruins. of a cathe- 
dral.; and a waterfall just tumbling out of a vanishing 
turret-window. : 

Mr. Newman, having combined in his system the 
strangest eccentricities of opinion, seems resolved to 
try whether he cannot finish by one or two practical 
paradoxes quite equal to any of his theoretical; and 
certainly he promises to be perfectly consistent in in- 
consistency. 

For example: he has said more in one chapter in this 
new edition of the “ Phases’ —to say nothing of his 
“ Soul,” and nothing of his Hebrew Monarchy ” — to 
wound and shock the religious feelings of his country- 
men, — to jar their inmost sense of all that is most 
sacred,— than any other writer of his day. Yet no 
sooner does any one proceed to expose his own relig- 
ious system, which seems so unreasonable to the world 
that probably not twenty people in it would profess 
adherence to it, than he looks grave, and protests 
against levity in the treatment of sacred things! I 
must answer, like Pascal when the Jesuits brought 
against him a similar charge, that “I am far enough 
from ridiculing sacred things, in ridiculing such no- 
tions.” Mr. Newman warns me with much solemnity 
against thinking that “questions pertaining to God 
are advanced by boisterous glee.”* I do not think 
“'The Eclipse ” is characterized by “ boisterous glee” ; 
and certainly I was not at all aware that the things 


* Reply, p. 36. 


THEORY AND PRACTICE. 5 


bial alone I have ridiculed — some of them advanced 
by him, and some by others — deserved to be treated 
with solemnity. For example, that an authoritative 
external revelation, which most people have thought 
possible enough, is impossible, —that man is most 
likely born for a dog’s life, and “there an end,” — that 
there are great defects in the morality of the New 
Testament, and much imperfection in the character of 
its Founder,—that the miracles of Christ might be 
real, because Christ was a clairvoyant and Mesmerist, 
— that God was not a Person, but Personality ;— I 
say, I was not at all aware that these things, and such 
as these, which alone I have ridiculed, were questions 
“pertaining to God,” in any other sense than the wild- 
est hypotheses in some sense “ pertain” to science, and 
the grossest heresies to religion. 

Again: in theory nothing can be more delightful 
than Mr. Newman’s charity ; in practice nothing more 
grotesque. He is full of fierce anathemas against 
bigotry, and declaims most passionately on behalf of 
charity and loving-kindness. In “'The Eclipse of 
Faith” I, with my poor “ Pagan” notions of morality, 
—so he is pleased to consider them, — carefully ab- 
stained from questioning the sincerity of his motives ; 
for | had nothing to do with his motives, —I had 
to do with his arguments. These I exposed, and 
sometimes ridiculed; I acknowledge it with becoming 
impenitence; I shall repeat the offence, if offence it 
be; and I am prepared presently to justify my con- 
duct. What course does Mr. Newman take? While 
enjoining charity, deprecating “personal antagonisms,” 
and talking in a most edifying strain about “ opening 
the mind to truth, and the heart to love,” he indulges 
in the most acrimonious imputations of “ blasphemy,” 
“ dishonesty,” “stealthy misrepresentations,” “ gross 

S . : 


6 A DEFENCE OF ‘* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 
garbling,” “dealing unscrupulously,” and I know ie 
what. 

He tells me in one place, that unless I mean what he 
says I must mean, — and which I certainly do not mean, 
if he means what he seems to mean, for it is arrant 
nonsense, — that my words are “palpably and inex- 
cusably dishonest”; that unless I believe another equal 
piece of nonsense, I am “ grossly iniquitous”; that in 
one place not only “ spiritual insight, but honesty, seems 
lacking”; and so forth. 

But all such things are a mere bagatelle compared 
with the invectives into which a threefold error — un- 
paralleled, I believe, in'the history of criticism — has be- 
trayed him. Those errors are that Harrington D 
meant what he did not mean, — that whatever Harring- 
ton D meant, J must mean; and, lastly, that Mr. 
Fellowes was designed to be a fac-simile of Mr. New- 
man; all which are pure illusions of Mr. Newman’s 
“ free criticism.” This I proceed to show." 


* There is one inadvertence, indeed, in Harrington’s discussion, which 
I sincerely regret, and I will take care to erase it in the next edition; for, 
however little designed to convey the meaning Mr. Newman attaches to 
it, I see it is fairly susceptible of it. Harrington says, ironically, “ This 
most devout gentleman somewhere quotes the words, ‘For the spiritual man 
judgeth all things, but himself is judged of no man,” Itis employed to 
express (what appears to me, I confess) the preposterous incongruity of 
using the words of Paul to sanction a system which Paul would utterly 
have repudiated. I still adhere to that view, and will justify it in a future 
section. But it was not my intention to give pain, and the words in italics 
shall therefore willingly come out. And so shall the “ Professor of Spir- 
itual Insight.” Mr. Newman says, indeed, that Harrington has so nick- 
named him. Hardly; it may be taken so, but it was not intended ; for 
any other name, or none at all, would have done just as well. The question 
(Shall we call, &c.?) in which the phrase occurs, was obviously put in ref- 
erence rather to Mr. Fellowes’s exigencies, than to Mr. Newman’s qualifica- 
tions. Fellowes, in a jiz, hardly knows whether to say — denying, as he 
does, the possibility of all external revelation — that he got his religious 
notions from nature alone, or in any way from without; since he confesses 


THREE PROLIFIC ERRORS. i 


‘Hastily assuming that the latter part of Harrington 
D ’s argument is something more than a mere re- 
—ductio ad absurdum from Mr. Newman’s own premises ; 
that it was designed to embody, not only the conclu- 
sions to which a sceptic might fairly drive any one 
who adopted those premises, not only the positive 
opinions of the sceptic himself, but the real opinions 
of the author of “The Eclipse of Faith,” — acting, I 
say, on this ludicrous misconception, Mr. Newman 
fires away with a vehemence which amazed me as I 
read it. What confidence, thought I, can be reposed 
in those powers of “free criticism,” in virtue of which 
our author decides on an argument of such immense 
sweep and complexity as the “Truth of Christianity,” 
constructs the true “ Hebrew Monarchy” out of the 
old Hebrew myths, and pronounces on the moral 
character of Jesus Christ ? 

In truth, | was nor sorry that he had fallen into 


his sentiments have been practically elicited by his spiritualist writers. 
Harrington remarks, that it is of little use for “nature to teach him, if 
somebody else is to teach nature”; and asks whether Mr. Newman shall 
be called Professor of Spiritual Insight. Mr. Parker’s name, or that of 
any other writer to whom Fellowes professed obligations, would have done 
just as well; or better still, no name at all; and no name there shall be. 

As to the word infidel, I cannot humor Mr. Newman. It is a word, he 
says, ‘“‘ which is the peculiar weapon of the proud and self-sufficient dog- 
matizer, who holds all to be unfaithful who do not adopt his opinions.” 
“This epithet itself proves that, under the mask of the sceptic, the Chris-’ 
tian (?) is venting his own pride and bitterness, which he unjustly attrib- 
utes to another.” Answer.— The reader will get used to Mr. Newman’s 
style by and by. I content myself with remarking, that, if Mr. Newman 
will interpret current words by their etymology, he may take offence 
enough. J use the word as it is now and has been long currently used 
among us, to indicate one who has utterly renounced all belief in the Di- 
vine authority of Christianity. Of course I think that a grievous error. 
How can I think otherwise? But from what cause proceeding in any in- 
dividual case I decline to speculate. Iam no judge of the heart, and do 
not wish to judge it. , 


8 A DEFENCE OF ‘*‘ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


these misconceptions; for people will be apt to argue, 
that, if he could thus err in his interpretation of so 
humble a book as “'The Eclipse,” he was not likely to 
be altogether infallible on the Word of God. <A few 
specimens of the vehemence with which he pursues 
this phantom will illustrate at once the sagacity of his 
criticism and the quality of his charity. It will be 
observed that I cite his invectives (such is their extrav- 
agance) with precisely the same indifference as if I had 
been charged with impaling somebody on the horns of 
the moon. I shall here and there, indeed, interlace 
the citations with a few words of my own; but of 
such a different temperature from Mr. Newman’s red- 
hot diction, that I almost fear that the reader will 
imagine himself plunged into a succession of hot and 
cold baths; or the curious tessellation may remind him 
of the lower regions. of Hecla, where, through the fis- 
sures in the snow and ice, ever and anon creeps into 
the cold, clear air the hot, sulphureous vapor from 
below. However, I will take care he shall pass in 
safety over these crevasses without being suffocated. 
The ordinary reader of “ The Eclipse” will no doubt 
be surprised to find that its author, “ speaking under a 
mask, uses a bold license of blasphemy against Nature 
and its God, which too clearly comes from the heart” ;* 
that “it is impossible to doubt the intensity of my convic- 
tion, that all nature testifies, with overpowering force, 
to every impartial mind, that its Creator is reckless 
of all moral considerations”! + that “'The Eclipse of 
Faith” “abounds in profane insults, which Mr. New- 
man does not see that anything else than the author’s 
own heart can have suggested”; + “that the author is 
unaware that an unmoral God is the very essence of 


* Reply, p.28. t Ibid. p. 31. t Ibid. p. 8. 


SPECIMENS OF CRITICISM AND CHARITY. g 


Paganism” ; and “that this and nothing else is what 
he is urging on us as Christianity.” “ O, how clearly 
does he show,” continues this master of “free” (and 
easy) “criticism,” “that in him it is hypocrisy to cry, 
Holy, holy, holy, to the Lord of heaven, whose holi- 
ness he professes to be totally unlike all that man calls 
either holy, or kind, or just!” * 

I say, the reader: must be surprised at all this, even 
prepared as he may be by acquaintance with Mr. New- 
man’s writings for any feats of logical legerdemain. 
I knew, indeed, that it was possible for a man hastily 
to adopt and abandon any opinions, if he took but a 
half of a seventh of a tenth of a thirteenth of a survey 
of the evidence; but here I could not find that there 
was any survey of evidence at all. 

Mr. Newman had defined the only guilty idolatry to 
be the worshipping, as “perfect and infinite,” that 
which we know to be finite and imperfect; by which 
lax definition it may well be doubted whether there 
are ten idolaters in the world. He had also said that 
Atheism may be only a speculative error, which ought 
not to divide our “hearts from any man.” Tor my 
smiling at all this singular liberality, he says, I have 
“ caustically reproved” his spurious charity “ towards 
honorable Pagans and Atheists, who fail of reaching 
his view of truth”; but adds, “I did not quite con- 
template such a case as that before me. I must wait 
and learn what sort of charity — not bastard — 1 may 
cherish towards one who wraps a Pagan heart in a 
Christian veil; who scolds down and mocks at other 
men’s piety ; who constructs sophistical arguments to 
leave them no alternative between his own Paganism, 
which is to them detestable, and an Atheism which 


* Reply, p. 32. 
8 * 


10 A DEFENCE OF *‘ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


they deprecate indeed, but feel far preferable to de- 
grading, heart-deadening devil-worship.” * 

Mr. Newman mistakes vehemence of diction for 
energy of style. If I have constructed sophistical ar- 
guments, I presume they may be shown to be so. I 
did not know, and have yet to learn, that I have 
scolded down and mocked at any man’s piety, by ex- 
posing the errors of those new revelations which begin 
by assuming that all external “revelations ” are “im- 
possible.” However, in one point Mr. Newman is 


quite right; he must “wait and learn,” probably, - 


‘many things; and certainly charity towards his critics. 
But I hope he will not hurry himself on my account, — 
I can wait too; or, if he likes, he may bestow it, when 
it comes, — my share of it I mean, it does not seem to 
be much,—on the aforesaid honorable Pagans and 
Atheists, who have not yet reached our critic’s views 
of truth. If that be true, they must surely stand in 
great need of it! 

After speaking of the ridicule with which I have 
treated the notion that men are in some danger of un- 
dervaluing this world, he says, “ But never, never did I 
address such an exhortatron to one who confesses that 
he has no discernment whether the Author of Nature 
be just or unjust, kind or cruel; one who is inwardly 
so dark that he cannot possibly have any religion but 
what he receives blindly. Such a one naturally rel- 
ishes a joke better than a psalm, a sceptical dialogue 
of Plato or Hume better than a treatise on Natural 
Theology, and will scarcely be so absurd as to sacri- 
fice what is substantial in this world for a religion 
which cannot penetrate into his affections.” + As to 
my uniform preference of a joke to a psalm, it is en- 


* Reply, p. 32. 4 Ibid. p. 33. 


SPECIMENS OF CRITICISM AND CHARITY. 11 


tirely a mistake; it depends on what the “joke” is, 
and whose the “psalm.” A psalm of David, I hope 
I should prefer to the richest joke, — say one of Mr. 
Newman’s paradoxes. On the other hand, I should 
probably prefer even a dull joke to a psalm, if the 
4 sacred ode” is to embody a theology which explodes — 
the characteristic doctrines of the Bible, and whether 
expressed in “rhyme” or “unrhymed metre.” How- 
ever, I shall have an opportunity of judging, if some 
worthy Deist will be kind enough to give us a speci- 
men or two of his,devotional Muse. As to Hume and 
poor Plato, who by some strange association of contrast 
are here linked together, I suppose it is pretty clear 
from “'The Eclipse” that the former is no great favorite 
with me, except for his genius; but I do frankly con- 
fess that I prefer the Pheedo of Plato, with its twilight 
hopes of a Revelation, and its faint echoes of Immor- 
tality from the “ everlasting hills,” to a treatise on the 
“ Soul,’ which, denying the possibility of the one, 
augments its “sorrows,” and, casting doubts on the 
other, quenches its “aspirations.” As to the rest of 
this passage, I freely acknowledge to the world that I 
have many, many faults,—as many as Mr. Newman, 
I have not the slightest doubt in the world; but those 
who know me, I think, will allow that there are not 
many persons who have less consulted what is “ sub- 
stantial in this world” in the maintenance or retention 
of their religious opinions, be they right or wrong. 
On the spirit of this passage I shall only add, that if I 
had been betrayed into saying any such thing of an 
utter stranger, merely because he had laughed at what 
he deemed a paradoxical opinion of mine, I should 
have thought it was rather too late in the day to lec- 
ture a controversial antagonist on the duty of “ watch- 
ing over his own heart, opening the mind to truth and 


12 A DEFENCE OF “THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


the heart to love, of casting away scorn and self-suffi- 
ciency,” * &c., &c., &ec., &c., and should have feared 
lest the reader should ask, as he read, “Of whom 
speaks the prophet this? of himself or of some other 
man ?” 

_ As one contrasts Mr. Newman’s loving injunction’ 
with his invectives, one seems to be transported into a 
world where the usual symbols of emotion are all in- 
verted, where men frown in pure benevolence, and 
gnash their teeth in loving-kindness and charity. 

One more sample of his style I must not withhold 
from the reader. “ With Paul and Isaiah, with Ads- 
chylus and Cleanthes, with Socrates and Paley, with 
Philo and Swedenborg,” —a curious collection, —“ I 
see that a good God reigns over all.” Did I ever deny 
it? One would think so, for he goes on: “ This author 
declares (!) all the evidence of facts to convict my sen- 
timents as a gratuitous absurdity, yet he calls himself a 
Christian, and reviles me as an infidel.” | It would be 
difficult, I rather think, to point out where I have re- 
viled him at all, much less for holding any such senti- 
ment. Whether Mr. Newman reviles me or not, I 
leave the reader to judge from what follows. ‘ With 
the Hebrew Psalmist, my heart avows, ‘ All thy works 
praise thee, O God, and all thy saints give thanks unto 
thee!’ My Christian monitor puts a new song into 
my mouth, ‘ All thy works convict thee, O God, and 
none but fools can praise thee for them.’” + These 
last words are put in inverted commas; but of course 
Mr. Newman does not intend them as a quotation; so 
that I must beg to say that the “ new song,” which is 
equally “ without rhyme and without reason,” is of his 
own composing, and that, instead of my putting it 


* Reply, p. 36. ? t Ibid. p. 34. t Ibid. 


SPECIMENS OF CRITICISM AND CHARITY. 13 


into his mouth, he has put it into mine. The theology 
Iam quite willing to admit that Mr. Newman. would 
think as execrable as I do. 

Finally, Mr. Newman observes, “ When the Bible 
has failed to develop in him spiritual insight, why 
should my words be more successful? Yes, it is hard 
to enlighten one who, after the outward washing of 
Christian baptism, has gone back into the mire .of 
Pagan demonry.”* ‘To the former part of the sentence 
(one word altered) I subscribe; if the Bible has indeed 
failed to develop spiritual insight, it is not likely that 
books which entirely disown its authority, its history, 
its miracles, its characteristic doctrines, will be more 
effectual. As to my supposed relapse into a belief of 
“ Pagan demonry,” it would be just as much to the 
purpose if I were to call Mr. Newman a transcenden- 
tal curve, or the root of an impossible quantity. 

I took up the new edition of “ The Phases,” in which 
a reply to “ The Eclipse” was promised, with some 
curiosity. Where, thought I, has “ Faith” got by this 
time ? What is its “ phase” at present? Has it thinned 
off to a yet finer crescent than it had at the end of the 
“last period” ? or has it returned to the first quarter? 
And oh! how rejoiced many would have been to see 
the faintest symptom that the cup of light was begin- 
ning to fill again, — as I trust we yet may. But when 
Tread the preceding remarks, I could hardly help ex- 
claiming, in nearly the words of one of the characters 
in Carleton’s Tales, “ Surely now there is nothing to 
be seen at all, barring the dark side of the luminary, 
which is at present invisible by reason of the ‘ Eclipse,’ ” 

As Mr. Newman seems to suppose that I must be 
of Harrington’s opinions, and as he supposes that 


* Reply, p. 36. 


14 A DEFENCE OF *“* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


Harrington is unsettled as to whether there be a 
personal God,*— though the contrary, I suppose, is 
manifest enough to every ordinary reader,} — it may 
be doubted whether Mr. Newman thinks me an Atheist 
in disguise, or the undisguised “ Pagan,” he generally 
represents me. But, at all events, he doubts my being 
a Christian; for when he speaks of his “ Christian ” 
opponent he has, in two places, after the word “ Chris- - 
tian” placed an eloquent note of interrogation ; a device 
by which thrifty wits, who feel they must economize 
sarcasm, may cheaply express it at the printer’s expense. 
At other times Mr. Newman is apparently pleased to 
think it possible I may be a Christian, and to speak on 
that hypothesis. It is pretty clear that I cannot be ~ 
both. As Sir Boyle Roche said, “ No man can be in 
two places at once, except he be a bird.” In like man- 
ner, | presume that either Iam or am not a Christian. 
Many men in the present day have instructed us, in- 
deed, that the mutations of the human mind may be 
very sudden, but still they require some interval; and 
whatever the rapidity of the changes, a man would be 
troubled, I imagine, to be absolutely two things at once. 

So extraordinary is this misinterpretation of my sen- 
timents, that some of my friends have said, “Js the 
supposition that you are a believer in an ‘wnmoral 
deity’ really a misconception? Is it not rather an 
evasion to avoid the necessity of encountering Har- 
rington D ’s argument? Is it not obvious to every | 
impartial reader that the argument of Harrington ex- 
pressed nothing dogmatically, but was simply a deduc- 
tion from Mr. Newman’s own premises? He merely 
affirmed that, if he adopted Mr. Newman’s criterion 
of what we are to believe of God, he must reject’ 


* Reply, p. 27. + See his express avowal, Eclipse, p. 164. 


EXPOSURE OF FIRST ERROR. 15 


many of the phenomena of the universe, — not all, nor 
the greater part, — but many of the phenomena of the 
universe, as God’s work, just as Mr. Newman does 
many of the statements of what God has done, as 
given in his word, and thus become at last a Mani- 
cheist, or, if he could not become that, an atheist, or 
else remain a sceptic? And further, that, supposing 
Mr. Newman’s theory of the origin and destination of 
man true, it increased the difficulty a thousand fold, 
and would really involve the conception of what Mr. 
Newman calls an unmoral deity ? Is not all this plain? 
Can it be a misconception?” For myself, [have taken 
Mr. Newman’s part. I have said, “ Let us in charity 
suppose it a misconception at all events; for if we sup- 
pose it a wilful perversion, will that make the case any 
better? It is not only the more charitable hypothesis, 
but Mr. Newman’s precipitancy of logic is such as to 
render it as easy for him as for any man thus to turn 
things topsy-turvy. I grant, indeed, that it is much 
more easy for Mr. Newman, instead of dissolving the 
connection between the premises and conclusion, and 
clearly showing that his premises do not lead to that 
conclusion, to represent Harrington as not reasoning 
on Mr. Newman’s premises at all, and then to turn 
round and say, ‘ Well, if you believe in a God reck- 
less of all moral considerations, how can any Bible 
have any authority?’” Yet (I argued with my friends), 
the very extravagance of the supposition is sufficient 
to allow us to suppose it a misconception, however 
enormous. “For tell me,” said I to one, “did you 
ever hear of anybody who thought that the author of 
‘'The Eclipse of Faith’ proclaimed his own inability to 
see anything but blackness of darkness in the real, 
known, undeniable works of God?”* “Not a soul,” 


* Reply, pp. 33, 34. 


16 A DEFENCE OF ** THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


said he; “JI have indeed heard of one man in the 
country, who, happening to plump down in the middle 
of Harrington’s disquisition, knew. not what to make 
of it.” “ Well,” said I, “that is not the case with Mr. 
Newman, for he has not ‘ plumped down’ into the mid- 
dle of Harrington’s speech, but has evidently read the 
book all through. However, 1 will throw him in, 
though I protest it is unfair, since he had only read a 
portion. This old gentleman, then, shall be one; and 
Mr. Newman, that is two. But, at all events, besides 
these two, I never heard of any one who concluded 
that I was a believer in an wnmoral Deity.” * 

But though on the principle on which I have acted 
in “ The Eclipse” and shall now, of not imputing ill 
motives to Mr. Newman, — into which I shall not be 
seduced by the example which he has set me, —I say, 
though on that principle I shall call his gross miscon- 
ception a misconception, I think it is not too much to 
say that it was aided by the unconscious instinct of 
self-preservation ; — for “Instinct,” as Falstaff says, 
“is a great matter.” 

But the reader will perhaps say, “ Well, but suppose 
Harrington did believe in an wnmoral deity, — which he 
did not, — what, in the name of common sense, has 
the Author of ‘' The Eclipse of Faith’ to do with it?” 
It seems quite sufficient for Mr. Newman to reason 
thus: “ Harrington believed so and so, and therefore 
the Author believes so and so.” If you look, you will 
see that he argues it must be so from the vehemence of 


* Since these passages were written, I find that a writer in the Prospec- 
tive Review also expresses doubts. This completes the critical triumvirate. 
I shall have a few word’ to say to him by and by. The differences, how- 
ever, are refined and exquisite. While Mr. Newman seems rather inclined 
to think me a Pagan on the whole, this writer seems rather to think me 
possibly an atheist! ‘ Risum teneatis, amici ? ” 


EXPOSURE OF SECOND AND THIRD ERRORS. 1% 


the argument! “The bold dogmatism of the sceptic 
is endorsed and confirmed by the Author. Indeed, were 
it not so, the elaborate and vehement argument would 
be obviously ridiculous ; but he means it to be cogent, 
and avows that it is.”* Of course Harrington avowed, 
and I avow, it is cogent against Mr. Newman and on 
Mr. Newman’s principles. But did mortal man ever 
hear of such criticism? “It must be so from the ve- 
hemence of the argument!” That is, if a character 
is naturally and dramatically represented, (and Har- 
rington is expressly said to be most impatient at the 
shallow theories which are offered in lieu of his early 
faith,) the biographer or the novelist must resemble the 
subject of his memoir or the character he depicts. 
Shakespeare himself, then, I suppose, must have been 
of all men’s characters and sentiments, for he could 
represent them all; and poor Walter Scott must have 
been “half Dutchman and half devil,” because he de- 
scribes Dirk Hatteraick as being so! Mr. James Mar- 
tineau doubts (as he well may) Mr. Newman’s apti- 
tudes for that “higher moral criticism” necessary to 
judge rightly the character of Christ. Such curious 
preconceptions as those just mentioned, adopted with- 
out the slightest hesitation, and vehemently acted on 
throughout his tirade, is enough to make one doubt 
whether criticism be his vocation at all. But I will 
say no more on Harrington’s argument here; in the 
next section I will distinctly show in what sense I 
“indorse and confirm it,’ with a challenge to any 
worthy Deist to reply to it on Mr. Newman’s behalf, 
since it is plain that he himself declines it. 

A similar singularity of misconception is seen in Mr. 
Newman in another point. In the same style of rea- 


* Reply, p. 27. 
“ 


18 A DEFENCE OF ** THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


soning in which he argues that I must think just as 
Harrington thinks, so he will have it that Mr. Fellowes 
must be intended as a full-length portrait of himself ; 
and so determined is he that it shall be so, that he says 
if I deny it, it shall be to no purpose. His language 


is: “ As to this Mr. Fellowes, who is he? his charac- ; 


ter is apparently intended to be a portrait of mine, as 
the Author conceives of me. Thus he insinuates a 
mean, degrading, and laughable opinion of me, if the 
reader will accept it: but if the reader cannot go quite 
so far, and says it is unfair, then the Author can back 
out and protest that Fellowes is not myself, but only 
my admirer.” * That is, he challenges an explanation, 
and then has the civility to say, it shall be unsatisfac- 
tory. ‘He will be drowned and nobody shall help 
him.” He may depend upon it, that, as I am very de- 
liberate in putting any thoughts of mine on paper, | 


am equally slow in “ backing out,” as he calls it, of — 


anything I have once written, except for the strongest 
reasons; and shall leave him to appropriate to himself 
any portrait he thinks proper, among those with which 
the very large gallery of biography or of fiction may 
supply him. Meantime I will say this: that I believe 
there are two points, and only two, in which Mr. Fel- 
lowes bears any resemblance to Mr. Newman; and | 
know, and the world knows, by experience, that Mr. 
Newman is not unique in those points. I may add, 
that as I have never expressed my belief of any re- 
semblance even in those two points, it is curious that 
Mr. Newman should thus appropriate the portrait, 


while he, at the same time, declares it to be most re-, 


pulsive and unlike himself. It is not usual for men to 
affirm, without any warrant from the painter, that a 


* Reply, p. 10. 


INFERENCES. 19 


picture is intended for them, which, at the same time, 
they feel themselves to be no way in love with, and 
which they also declare to be unlike them. Mr. New- 
man even seems to imagine that the personal pecu- 
liarities of Mr. Fellowes* were designed to caricature 
him. I beg to say that I knew no characteristics of Mr. 
Newman, except that. he was a gentleman, a scholar, 
and a very indifferent metaphysician; and if I had 
known any personal traits, I should have been the last 
to bring them into my book. Meantime, I will tell 
Mr. Newman how he may henceforth distinguish him- 
self from Mr. Fellowes, and no longer unwisely as- 
sume, and still more unwisely tell the world, that the 
character of Mr. Fellowes is intended to caricature his 
own. First, Mr. Fellowes is expressly said to be a 
youth of about eight-and-twenty years of age (in whom, 
therefore, some versatility of opinion and some rash- 
ness of judgment might be excusable); and I rather 
think Mr. Newman, like myself, is a little beyond those 
years. Secondly, Mr. Fellowes expressly abjures sev- 
eral of Mr. Newman’s opinions, openly prefers those 
of Mr. Parker, and freely avows that he has eclecticized 
from the many delightful varieties of opinion which 
the distractions of our modern spiritualists so abun- 
dantly afforded him. This very circumstance, indeed, 
Mr. Newman strangely adduces to establish his pre- 
conception; and says Mr. Fellowes is employed to 
make “ damaging concessions,” when he dissents from 
Mr. Newman and prefers Mr. Parker! One would 
surely more reasonably infer (what is the truth) that 
‘he was not intended to be the counterpart of any au- 
thor. I am astonished that those who choose to regard 
“The Kclipse” as “ fundamentally fictitious,” should 


* Reply, p. 11. 


20 A DEFENCE OF ** THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.’ 


fail to conjecture that the author avails himself of this 
character to bring the sentiments of different men un- 
der discussion; which is naturally done by citations 
from their writings. Whether those citations are fair 
or not is another thing: and the only real question be- 
tween me and those authors is as to this point. I 
assert they are; and, in Mr. Newman’s case, I shall 
by and by show that they are. Thirdly and lastly, 
the readers of “ The Eclipse” will allow that Mr. Fel- 
lowes is uniformly gentle, affable, and patient in argu- 
ment (whatever his infirmities) ; and though for aught 
I know (and I am sure I hope it) Mr. Newman is so 
generally, it must be acknowledged that the present 
tirade proves that he is not wniformly so. 3 

I imagine, as people read the very acrimonious and 
vehement charges against the Author of “The Eclipse,” 
that they will say, “ We had better have the old-fash- 
ioned Christian charity than this new-coined liberality 
of the ‘spiritual Deism.” Or is it Mr. Newman’s 
pleasure to suppose that the principle of the “ Division 
of Labor” applies to moral science as well as to po- 
litical economy, and that, while it is one man’s province 
to preach charity, it is another man’s duty to practise 
it? I wonder whether that is true of the “ Faith, 
Hope, and Charity” of “ Spiritualism,” which is true 
of the same graces in Christianity. “ And now abid- 
eth Faith, Hope, Charity, —but the greatest of these 
is Charity.” If so, surely the two former must be 
vanishing quantities. 

I would also beseech Mr. Newman to consider how 
unbecoming in the estimation of his “very insolent 
and dictatorial critics,” as he terms them, is that in- 
tense positivity which characterizes both his assertion 
of his own opinions and the imputation of evil motives 
to his opponents. They will say that one who has 


/ 


THESE ERRORS EXPLAIN GREATER. 21 


experienced so many changes of opinion himself should 
learn at least caution and forbearance. Dogmatism, 
in conjunction with perpetual vacillation, should be 
left to him of whom our great satirist said so bit- 
terly, — 
“Stiff in opinions, — always in the wrong, — 
And everything by fits, and nothing long.” - 

I think, also, people will be apt to say, “ Here is a 
gentleman who sees the imperfections of New Testa- 
ment morality; who is afraid lest the consciences of 
men may be depressed to the ‘ Biblical standard’ ; 
who points out the many and grievous imperfections 
in the character of our Lord Jesus Christ; who has 
himself lighted on ‘a fixed moral basis, which he will 
not allow to be tampered with by authority of mira- 
cle’; who inculcates the duty of ‘ opening the heart to 
love and the mind to truth’: having reached this van- 
tage-ground, looking down with serene compassion on 
us ‘puir blinded mortals,” we naturally expect from 
him great compassion, and magnanimity, and self- 
control, and must begin to doubt, from his acrimony 
and impatience, whether his system can be the com- 
plement of a defective Christianity!” They will think 
they had better have the New Testament, with all its 
claims to “authority,” than a teacher who, professedly 
renouncing authority, is more impatient at his opinions 
being questioned than if he really had it. We are all 
in great trepidation, we can assure him, for the honor 
of the “ fixed moral basis”; and, if he goes on so, pre- 
dict that the obstinate world will resolutely shut its 
eyes against the new light that has visited it! 

I cannot affect to be surprised at the misconceptions 
of “The Eclipse of Faith” into which Mr. Newman 
has fallen, when I turn to his chapter on the “ Moral 


Perfection of Christ.” If Mr. Newman can so con- 
9 * 


22 A DEFENCE OF ‘** THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


strue fact and narrative as to charge our Lord witha 
“vain conceit of cleverness” and “blundering seif- 
sufficiency” in his answer to the Pharisees concerning 
the tribute-money ; with “arrogance and error com- 
bined” in other cases; with “vacillation and preten- 
sion”; with “egregious vanity” and “moral unsound- 
ness”; with guiltily provoking the rulers, by virulent 
invectives, to slay him, because he had resolved on 
suicide in order to escape the alternative of becoming 
an impostor or renouncing his Messiaship, —I need 
not wonder at any vagaries into which such logic may 
wander, or at any invectives which that erroneous 


criticism may prompt. “ The disciple is not above 
his master; it is sufficient” — O, how much more than 
sufficient ! —“ that he be as his master.” 


The reader will perhaps say, “Is it possible that 
Mr. Newman can have said all this? Will the world 
believe that you are not misrepresenting him, as he 
says you and so many more of his critics have done, 
by: not quoting enough to indicate his meaning?” 
This is Mr. Newman’s continual complaint. .On some 
points it might be difficult to say how much was to be 
quoted that would explain Mr. Newman’s meaning; a 
good deal more, I fancy, than Mr. Newman has ever 
written or is ever likely to write. But, in the present 
case, the reader may rest content: Mr. Newman has 
expressed his meaning plainly enough; and in the sec- 
tion in which I shall briefly examine this matter, I will 
make extracts ample enough to enable the world to 
form a complete notion of the powers of “ free criti- 
cism” which Mr. Newman brings to bear upon the 
Gospel narrative and on the character of Christ! If I 
could, I would publish every syllable of that chapter 
in the present little volume. I am so far from being 
afraid of its doing any injury to Christianity, that I 


THESE ERRORS EXPLAIN GREATER. 23 


am persuaded there are few of its advocates who 
would do more for it by their defence than such an 
assailant by his attacks; and that if infidelity could 
be ruined, such imprudences would go far to ruin it. 
Mr. Newman wonders at the popularity of “'The 
Eclipse,” and asks, “ What must be the destitution 
of the Christian cause before it could welcome such 
an ally?”* Iacknowledge, with profound conviction 
and undissembled sincerity, that the book is infinitely 
unworthy of my theme. But I cannot retort this sar- 
casm; I acknowledge that Mr. Newman’s book, with 
its new chapter on the Perfection of Christ, is infinitely 
worthy of Infidelity. 

Still, I repeat, I am rejoiced to find Mr. Newman 
falling into such flagrant errors respecting so simple a 
book as “ The Eclipse”; errors which resemble those 
of certain disciples of Strauss, who, on the strength 
of their infallible canons of criticism, pronounced the 
“ Amber Witch” no fiction, but veritable history. I 
am rejoiced, both on general and on special grounds; 
on general grounds, for it shows us that this confident 
criticism, which is so sagacious in dealing with an- 
cient documents, — which can tell us by internal evi- 
dence just where an interpolation begins and ends, — 
how many chapters and verses of the Acts are genuine 
and how many not, —that so much is written by the 
true Isaiah and so much by the Pseudo-Isaiah, —is no 
sooner compelled to deal with a practical test, than it 
falls into the most enormous mistakes. And | am re- 
joiced on special grounds; because it shows me that, 
even in the strange chapter on the “ Personal Perfec- 
tion” of Christ, it is not necessary to form so painful 
an opinion of the critic as it would be otherwise diffi- 
cult to avoid forming. 


* Reply, p. 37. 


24 A DEFENCE OF *‘ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


It does astound me, I confess, beyond all measure, 
that Mr. Newman can read the New Testament with 
such eyes, and rest content with such criticism on that 
“Bright Excellence,’ which has in general disarmed 
hostility, even where the mind has been unfriendly to 
Christianity itself; — on which so many millions of 
minds have dwelt with unmingled love and veneration. 
If only a picture, still it is a picture with which no his- 
tory nor fiction besides furnishes us; in which Power 
and Wisdom — usually the exclusive gods of man’s 
idolatry — are for once subordinated to perfect Love. 
It is the picture of one gentle towards the infirmities 
and follies of man, patient with his waywardness, lov- 
ingly forgetful of his wrongs; of one —and O how 
beautiful, if only a fable!—who never broke “ the 
bruised reed,” who came “to bind up the broken- 
hearted, to give deliverance to the captive,’ to wel- 
come penitence to his feet, and to offer the “ weary 
rest”; of one who~ sided unchangeably with weak- 
ness and suffering against strong-handed oppression, 
whose patience was proof against every insult to him- 
self, and whose indignation never gleamed forth but 
twice, and was then only extorted by that comprehen- 
sive sympathy with humanity, which was the burden 
and the passion of his existence; once when, mingled 
with grief, it shot a momentary flash on the censorious 
hypocrites who grudged and murmured at his mercy 
to the wretched, and once when it gathered in thunder- 
clouds, and launched its vivid bolts over the guilty 
abodes of those who perverted every law, divine and 
human, to the purpose of oppressing and grinding 
their fellow-creatures, who “for a pretence made long 
prayers,” “devoured widows’ houses,” “took away 
the key of knowledge,” “sat in Moses’s seat” and 
made it the Devil’s throne. In a word, it is a picture 


AN ARGUMENT FOR CHARITY. 25 


of one whose whole life was one long yearning agony 
of sympathy with the guilt and sorrows of humanity, 
and whose death Ah! how strange, how passing 
strange it is, that any should have an ungentle word 
to say of Him, even though only a picture! Is it not 
a picture which, if the original never existed, we should 
long to-see realized ?— one from which we should turn 
away, after long and entranced contemplation, and 
sighing say, — 
“© that those lips had language!” 

And, in general, to do human nature justice, — yes, 
even unbelieving human nature, —it has not been in- 
sensible to the claims which that portrait has on hu- 
man veneration. The “grim feature” of Infidelity has 
generally relaxed when it has looked at Him. Those 
whose foul breath has sullied every mirror which reflect- 
ed any meaner excellence, have generally spared that. 
Once or twice in a century, indeed, some one or two 
have appeared, animated by such intense envy of great 
ness, or such pure hatred of goodness, that they have not 
spared even the character of Christ. They have been 
inspired by such a gratuitous malignity, that one al- 
most feels that, if they had lived in the time of Judas, 
they would have done the traitor’s office at a cheaper 
rate, and spared the too happy Pharisees their thirty 
pieces of silver. 

I rejoice — unfeignedly rejoice — that it is not neces- 
sary to class Mr. Newman in this small category. I 
see in his “ Hebrew Monarchy,” in his chapter on the 
“ Perfection of Christ,’”” — I know by my own experience 
in his outrageous mistakes in relation to “ The Hclipse 
of Faith,’ — that he can misread evidence which ap- 
pears clear enough to the eyes of other men, and weigh 
it in analytic balances which set their notions of prob- 
ability utterly at defiance. 


os 


26 A DEFENCE OF THE “* ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


And now for a word or two of defence of my method 
of controversy in “ The Eclipse of Faith.” I have said 
I have not imputed motives; I did not before, and shall 
not do it now: nor will I enter into the question of 
moral dispositions at all. Each man must be judged 
in that matter by the only equitable Judge.* But be- 


* Mr. Newman, while so earnestly deprecating controversial indecorum | 
and inculcating “charity,” seems to be unaware of the character of many 
parts of his own publications. Does he think it can be pleasant to the 
“Trish Clergyman” to be so characterized that few who know anything 
of him can miss him, and yet be told that it was said he had been mis- 
taken for a beggar in Dublin, and had been offered a half-penny under 
that impression? Does he think it can be pleasant to Dr. Henderson 
(Phases, p. 127, Sec. Ed. p. 78)— one. of the most venerable and con- 
scientious men of our time —to be told in print that Mr. Newman’s friend, 
John Stirling, had flippantly said, that “ Mark was probably inspired, be- 
cause he was an acquaintance of Peter, and because Dr. Henderson would be 
reviled by other Dissenters if he doubted it?” Does he know what that in- 
sult, both to Dr. Henderson and to his religious contemporaries, means ? 
That it imputes to both the most unworthy motives and the vilest conduct ? 
Does Mr. Newman think that, in similar style, he is to be allowed to ride 
over all his critics, as “ very insolent and dictatorial” ; imputing “ dishon- 
esty ” to some, wilful “ misrepresentation ” to others, and “ gross garbling ” 
to almost everybody that touches him? I tell him plainly, I know of no 
writer who so largely exacts the tributes of charity; none who repays 
them less. 

He should remember, in charging his opponents with unworthy motives 
in defending any opinions he once held, how easy it would be for them to 
retort upon him. The opinions he now impugns he once held and de- 
fended ; and the fragments of the theories he has rejected strew the whole 
way through the “ Phases,” like the baggage of a flying army. Did he not 
once believe Mark inspired? Did he not once hold the Bible all true, 
which he says can only be defended by the “crooked” and immoral sub- 
terfuges which he charges on what he calls Bibliolatry? Did it never 
occur to him that his opponents might ask him, on his so lightly charging 
them with “dishonesty” for still holding what he once held, — “Pray, 
Mr. Newman, will you answer us this plain question? Were you ‘hon- 
est’ or ‘dishonest’ when you held the views which you now reject? If 
honest, is it impossible for you to imagine that those who still hold what 
you once held, may be honest too? If dishonest, — which we are far from 
believing,— are you precisely the person to impute to us ‘dishonesty’? 
Or, lastly, are you alone honest, no matter what you accept or what you 
reject ¢” 


MY PRINCIPLES OF CONTROVERSY, par 


yond that I will not go, for, Mr. Newman or any man. 
Living in a free country, and with a free press, where 
all opinions are daily sifted, and, if thought ridiculous, 
ridiculed, I will never surrender an iota of the privilege 
I freely concede to others. Least of all will I surren- 
der it to one who treats unceremoniously what his 
fellow-men hold most sacred, who, by denying the 
very possibility of an external revelation, advertises 
me that his religious opinions are of a private origina- 
tion, who cannot get more than a very few to coincide 
with them, and who has surely passed through changes 
enough himself to make him indulgent towards others 
for freely canvassing his own opinions. On those opin- 
ions, expressed in his books, I have commented without 
hesitation. I freely confess it; and that I will ever 
do so in reference to any opinions expressed by mortal 
man, let his pretensions be what they may, let his re- 
sentment be what it will. very one who publishes 
his opinions to the world in a free country must lay his 
account with that; and as it is a right which, as I have 
said, I yield to others, so it is one I will never surrender 
for myself. Further, if I believe those opinions, as I 
do many of those of Mr. Newman, to be not only false, 
but pernicious, I will spare neither argument nor ridi- 
cule to make them appear so to others. In a contest 
for truth, — and I believe that this controversy has to 
do with vital truth, —truth in which the best interests 
of our children, of our country, of our species, are in- 
volved, —it is unmanly to flinch. I will use every 
weapon, whether of argument or ridicule, which God 
has given me, and I will strike home wherever my ad- 
versary leaves a rivet open in his armor. It is a false 
charity to act otherwise. Charity to each other as 
much as Mr. Newman will, and, indeed, rather more 
than in his present mood he seems disposed to exercise ; 


28 A DEFENCE OF “*THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


but to opinions, if we deem them false, none. In ar- 
gument, as Socrates says, it becomes neither party to 
ask for or to receive quarter; and that quarter which 
I disdain to ask, let my opponent be assured I will 
never give. 

But ridicule? it will be said. Yes; and ridicule too, 
if motives be untouched. 

It is asword, I know, which cuts both ways; but it 
is never so keen as when truth whets it. God is my 
witness, that, so far from calling down fire from heaven 
to injure an opponent, I would not scorch one hair of 
his head; but as for his opinions, if I believe them per- 
nicious to mankind, I should be, in my judgment, a 
traitor and renegade to truth and conscience, if I did 
not tax every energy of my nature to make them ap- 
pear,so to others. ‘This cannot be done, as Mr. New- 
man himself says in his preface to the new edition 
of “The Hebrew Monarchy,” without giving offence. 
But, as he truly says, it must be done; and I accept 
and concede the equal terms. No doubt it would be 
pleasant, if, in performing this friendly office for each 
other, men could find out some moral chloroform which 
might steep in painless slumber a too sensitive vanity, 
while some huge fungous growth was being dissected 
out. But this cannot be; and the scalpel must proceed. 
As for my opinions, if they be false, I yield them up 
freely to whoever will show them to be so. Let him, 
if he can, launch against them bolts compacted out of 
all the subtlest elements of mind, and pour out upon 
them argument, fancy, wit, sarcasm, passion, in a 
stream of living fire, “ till they be consumed.” Charity 
to men, I again say, as much as any man will; but as 
to that hateful indifferentism which is so rife in our 
day, and which threatens to be our plague, it is equally 
an insult to the claims of truth, and a mockery of the 


% 


CHRISTIANITY NEED NOT FEAR SATIRE. 29 


claims of charity. Charity is exercised in spite of dif- 
ferences, manfully stated and avowed." 

“ But will not the employment of ridicule against 
the opponents of Christianity lead them to use the 
same weapon?” I imagine some good timid Chris- 
tian to say. J answer, And have they ever spared it, 
dear simple soul? Will your not using it prevent 
their abusing it? Will your throwing away the arrow 
prevent their transfixing you with theirs? Is not the 
shield of Christianity stuck full of those shafts? From 
Lucian to Voltaire, the whole literature of infidelity 
shows what sort of “reciprocity ” forbearance is likely 
to meet with. Your enemies have tried the weapon, 
and it has been in vain; you may see that somehow it 
does not prevail. Nay, take heart, man; one of the 
most striking tests of the indomitable energy, the vital 


* Here is worthy Mr. Parker, for example, telling us, in a recent publi- 
cation, that ‘“ many a philosopher has seemed without religion, even to a 
careful observer; sometimes has passed for an atheist. Some of them 
have to themselves seemed without any religion, and have denied that 
there was any God; but all the while their nature was truer than their 
Wea es oe They had the intellectual love of God, though they knew it 
not; though they denied it...... These philosophers, with a real 
love of truth, and yet a scorn of the name of God, understand many things, 
perhaps, not known to common men; but this portion of their nature has 
yet escaped their eye,—they have not made an exact and exhaustive in- 
ventory of the facts of their own nature. Such men have unconsciously 
much of the intellectual part of piety.’ — Ten Sermons of Religion, p. 10. 

No wonder that he finds all meaner differences swallowed up and ab- 
sorbed in this “unconscious piety,” and thinks that a Buddhist, or a Feti- 
chist, or even a man whose “hands are smeared over with the blood of 
human sacrifices,” may be all in a fair way enough. And this insipid 
broth, into which all conceivable opinions are shred, so as to become un- 
distinguishable, is to be recommended as a concoction of true charity ; 
that is, charity is to be exercised when there is no longer room for any! 

The worst of it is, that this latitudinarian charity is apt to degenerate 
into a curious sort of bigotry. It is always vehement enough against 
any opinions that imply that opinions are of any importance, or indeed 
against any opinion except the opinion that no opinions are of any. 

10 


30 A DEFENCE OF “‘ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


power of your religion, as striking as its resistance to 
persecution itself, is its invulnerability to ridicule. 
Though Shaftesbury was wrong in saying that ridicule 
was the test of truth, it is usually impossible for error 
long to stand against it; nor is there another historical 
religion on éarth that could endure the ridicule poured 
upon Christianity, if poured upon it (as is the case 
with the ridicule the Gospel has encountered) by men 
growing up in the midst of it. If Christianity could 
have been laughed out of existence, she would have 
ceased to breathe long ago. We have but to look into 
the writings of the ancient philosophers and satirists 
to see how little the ancient mythologies would have 
stood against such weapons. Jupiter, with all his 
thunderbolts, could not have resisted the raillery of 
Plato and Cicero; and all the shafts of Apollo would 
be of no avail before those of Aristophanes and Lucian. 

If you have, as you believe, 'T'ruth on your side, you 
will do well and wisely not wholly to cast aside a 
weapon, which has not been and will not be used the 
less against you for your rejecting it, and which Truth 
always, in the nature of things, can wield more power- 
fully than Error. As to the legitimacy of its occasional 
use against solemn “ follies” and would-be sacred “im- 
pieties,’ read Pascal’s immortal Eleventh Letter; if 
that does not convince you, I have nothing more to say. 

But surely it is the drollest of all drolleries to hear 
our modern infidelity affecting a Puritan prudery in 
the treatment of religious subjects; to see its face glis- 
tening with spiritual onction ; its mystic eloquence gar- 
nished with terms of Scripture, taken in an esoteric 
sense, and poor Paul and Peter quoted to avouch what 
they never dreamed of. . Assuredly this solemnity of 
visage and phraseology is both too recent and too in- 
consistent to render it particularly decorous to twit a 


CHRISTIANITY NEED NOT FEAR SATIRE. 31 


Christian advocate with levity in the treatment of 
“sacred subjects.” Has not the whole history of infi- 
delity been marked by the freest employment of wit, 
satire, and ridicule in every form? Would to God it 
had stopped with refined ridicule! Have not its writ- 
ers been full of absolute mockery and scurrility against 
all that Christians deem most sacred? Are the names 
of Tindal, Bolingbroke, Voltaire, and ‘Tom Paine, and 
a thousand more, forgotten? Christianity may surely 
be pardoned, if it has now and then laughed a little in 
return at what are surely laughable enough, — the 
theories, infinitely various and discordant, of those 
who would crush her. But no; our opponents then 
immediately become grave, put on a long face, and 
begin to inculcate a seemly gravity in the treatment 
of such sacred subjects! The enemies of Christianity 
are still a little like its earliest opponents, whom our 
Lord compares to “the children sitting in the market- 
place.” Christianity expostulates with them often 
enough, and looks grave often enough, and they have 
laughed at her; she ventures to laugh at their follies 
in return, and they look suddenly grave; “she mourns 
to them, and they do not lament; she pipes unto 
them, and they will not dance.” But it is now as 
of old, “ Wisdom is justified of her children.” 

But perhaps it is thought that this solemn warning 
against levity may induce the readers of “ ‘The Hclipse 
of Faith” to disown their ally. It is of no consequence 
to the author if they do, since his conscience justifies 
him, whether they do or not; as his book was not 
written to displease Mr. Newman, so neither was it 
written to please them. But let not my opponents 
think Christians such simpletons as not to know what 
it is that the author of “ The Eclipse” has laughed at; 
they will answer as John Bunyan did, when in prison, 


32 A DEFENCE OF “THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


to the gentleman who sent him a Christmas pie, think- 
ing to add a petty “affliction to his bonds” by tanta- 
lizing him with the sight of a dainty which his scru- 
ples would not let him touch. But John cried, Dis- 
tinguo. Few could do it better. He munched up the 
pie with great satisfaction, and told the messenger to 
say that John Bunyan could tell the difference between 
Christmas and a Christmas pie. In like manner will 
Christians answer my opponents, when they warn them 
against an unseemly “levity” in treating “spiritual” 
subjects. 

It is obvious that the opponents of Christianity fear 
lest reprisals should be made upon them by pointing 
out the absurdities, incredibilities, and discordancies of 
the systems they would substitute for it. Ithink Chris- 
tians have let them have their way long enough, in 
stating and deriding the difficulties of Christianity ; 
and I for one shall take the liberty of reminding them 
that their own difficulties are greater still. 

But if the creation of merriment on any subject in 
any way connected with religion be the error and the 
sin, I am by no means sure that many of our new 
spiritualists have not quite as much to answer for as 
myself. ‘The great difference between us is, that I 
have sometimes made my readers laugh at my illustra- 
tions, and they have as often made them laugh at 
their arguments; I have attacked error with irony, and 
they have assailed truth with paradox. 

I confess, indeed, the sonorous solemnity with which 
they enforce their “ Procul! O procul! este profani” ; 
but the words from such lips are not the less langhable 
for all that; often more so. If “ wisdom” sometimes 
“wears motley,” it is quite as often the case that folly 
puts on the garb of wisdom. ‘The owl is the symbol 
of wisdom; but the owl herself is not wise. 


DEFENCE OF MY METHOD. 33 


But Mr. Newman complains also of the plan of “The 
Eclipse.” He says, “It is self-condemning as a medium 
of controversy.” “The Socratic dialogue,” it seems, 
“when used in talk, may possibly have a legitimate use 
to a teacher addressing uncultivated minds”; but he 
objects to it in print. Very natural. “In writing, 
where one person-works both the puppets, it really is 
too puerile.”* But I divined Mr. Newman’s answer, 
and guarded against it. It was easy to see, in his 
writings, on what mere splinters of evidence a logic so 
buoyant as his could survive the wreck of an argu- 
ment; and therefore I resolved that the greater part 
of the discussions in which his opinions were sifted 
should be in the form of disquisition, and not dialogue. 
I made Harrington give, in this form, the sceptical 
results of accepting Mr. Newman’s dogmas. In taking 
the positive argument on the other side (“ On a Book- 
Revelation”) I used the same form; as also in the notes 
on the three questions of Marriage, Slavery, and the 
Karly Progress of Christianity, given to Mr. Fellowes ; 
and in the notes on a “Fundamental Fallacy.” The 
only dialogue in which Mr. Newman’s views of an 
external revelation are canvassed at any length, (though 
I conceive abundantly sufficient as a reductio ad ab- 
surdum,) concludes + with an express admission that 
the principles of his main doctrine have not been en- 
tered into, and that they are reserved for the subse- 
quent disquisition on a “ Book-Revelation.” I may re- 
mark, in general, that at least half the entire volume is 
free from this novel sin of — Dialogue! 

Of course it would be pleasant to an adversary to 
dictate the form in which he shall sift our opinions ; 
but he is not likely to grant it; nor shall I to mine. 


* Reply, p. 8. t+ Eclipse, p. 96. 
10 * 


34 A DEFENCE OF ** THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


Nor do I allow that the Platonic dialogue need be the 
“screen of infinite sophistries.” All depends on the 
fairness with which an adversary’s opinions are cited ; 
whether I have here done Mr. Newman injustice or 
not, will be seen ina future page: I contend that I 
have not. As to “working both the puppets,” it is in 
fact no more than is, to a great extent, necessarily done 
in every work of controversy, whatever its form, and 
rather more disguisedly in the ordinary form; in all 
alike, an opponent’s arguments are stated by him who 
confutes them, and whether fairly stated and dealt 
with, or not, depends on the clearness of head and in- 
tegrity of heart of him who states them. 

Mr. Newman complains of having to fight with a 
“sham adversary” (the sceptic), and says, that he 
“shrinks with a most painful repugnance from one 
who, by discarding his personality, thinks to get free 
from moral responsibility.” * It is really hard to know 
what to make of all this. Does he refer to my having 
introduced Harrington — whether a real or imaginary 
character, matters not—to use the argumentum ad 
hominem, or does he refer to my having published 
anonymously? I am quite in the dark. If the for- 
mer, I presume Plato, Pascal, and Berkeley will be a 
sufficient apology; if the latter, I presume I require 
none. I published anonymously, — partly, and indeed 
principally, that the book might sink or swim purely 
by its own merits or demerits, without anything either 
to conciliate or prejudice ina name. Iused it asa 
moral electrometer, to ascertain the intensity of the 
“ spiritual” currents in our day; or as a feather, to see 
which way the wind blew, and whether my country- 
men still took any considerable interest in that “ his- 


* Phases. Reply, p. 9. 


DEFENCE OF MY METHOD. 85 


torical Christianity,” which so many of our modern 
infidels have asserted is all but exploded amongst us. 
I am rejoiced to find that they do; and that I may 
apply, with a little alteration, to some of our vaunting 
opponents, the passage in which Burke characterizes 
the noisy revolutionists of his day: “ Because half a 
dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring 
with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of 
great cattle repose in the shade, and are silent, pray 
do not suppose that those who make the noise are the 
only inhabitants of the field; or that, after all, they are 
other than the little, meagre, hopping, though loud and 
troublesome, insects of the hour.” 

But as to my being a “sham antagonist,” I should 
have thought that the decision with which, when speak- 
ing in my own person, principles were laid down, and 
the consequences of argument taken, might have left 
no doubt that Iwas none. Though I rode into the 
field with a plain shield and a barred visor, I should 
have thought there could be as little doubt about my 
being no “sham antagonist,” as Brian de Bois-Guilbert 
could have felt about Ivanhoe, when that knight touched 
‘his shield with the sharp end of his lance. 

In conclusion, the very worst thing I wish Mr. New- 
man—and Iam sure it is the very kindest — is, that 
he may retrace his way to the faith he has abandoned, 
and advocate the truths he now seeks to subvert. 
But if this is not to be, and he will continue to write 
against Christianity, then I hope it may be with the 
same force of logic, the same taste, discrimination, and 
self-control, which he has manifested in the chapter 
“On the Perfection of Christ,” and his “Reply to ‘ The 
liclipse of Faith’ ” 


36 A DEFENCE OF “THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


SECTION II. 


HOW FAR I “INDORSE”’ HARRINGTON D ’3 ARGUMENT, 
AND WHETHER I BELIEVE IN AN UNMORAL DEITY. 


Anpv now I propose to restate for Mr. Newman’s 
benefit, who seems inclined to evade it, —or for the 
benefit of any other Deist who is disposed to take up 
the gauntlet for him,—that argument of Harrington 
D , from which my critic so preposterously infers 
-such strange things as these:—“It is impossible to 
doubt the intensity of this Christian advocate’s convic- 
tion that all nature testifies with overpowering force, 
to every impartial mind, that its Creator is reck- 
less of all moral considerations.”* “ With energetic 
and dogmatic earnestness he enforces upon me, that 
. God, as revealed to him and me in Nature, has no 
consistent or trustworthy moral character.” + I an- 
swer (as I have already briefly done), that neither does 
Harrington D profess any such “conviction” nor 
“enforce ” any such doctrine, nor if he did, do I. He 
argues, — and I so far quite “indorse” the reasoning, — 
that the rigid adoption of Mr. Newman’s own criterion, 
by which he rejects certain facts of Scripture as mor- 
ally unworthy of God, will necessitate a similar con- 
clusion in relation to some of the facts of the universe. 
I do not, any more than Harrington, assert (he is a 
sceptic simply, and asserts nothing, I am a Christian, 
I humbly hope, and assert the contrary) that the facts 


* Reply, p. 81. t Ibid. p. 34, 


HOW FAR 1 **INDORSE.”’ 37 


of the universe prove an “ wnmoral Deity,” as Mr. New- 
man phrases it. I believe that those facts of the Divine 
administration which are to us utterly unaccountable, 
(as I am free to confess many of them are to me, and, 
as I imagine, to everybody else,) are, like the analo- 
gous facts of the Bible, to which Mr. Newman objects, 
to be humbly received by our faith as reconcilable, 
we know not how, with perfect wisdom, justice, and 
goodness; on the strength of that general evidence 
which establishes the truths of Theism* in spite of 
these objections, just as the general evidence for the 
Bible proves that to be divine im spite of similar ob- 
jections. 

I believe firmly that the prevailing characteristics of 
the universe indicate unlimited power and wisdom, and, 
in general, goodness; the last, however, so checkered 
as to admit of being blessedly confirmed by an external 
revelation, assuring the faltering reason of man, amidst 
the conflicting phenomena around us, that the goodness 
of the Deity ts unlimited and perfect. 

And, certainly, facts may sufhiciently show that such 
a revelation would be most useful, and should be most 
welcome. Who can deeply reflect on the endless the- 
ories which the unaided speculation of man has, in all 
ages and countries, given birth to, —the -varieties ot 


* If I did not see that Mr. Newman was “reckless of all logical consid- 
erations,” I should certainly think he must be “reckless of all moral con- 
_ siderations,” in representing me as believing what he imputes to me, con- 
sidering what is said of the Christian’s point of view by Harrington himself, 
to say nothing of the whole tenor of the book : —“ The Christian speaks 
on this wise: ‘I find, in reference to Christianity, as in reference to The- 
ism, what appears to me an immense preponderance of evidence of various 
kinds in favor of its truth ; but both alike I find involved in many difficul 
ties, which I acknowledge to be insurmountable, and in many mysteries 
which I cannot fathom. I believe the conclusions in spite of them.’”— 
p. 410. 


38 A DEFENCE OF ‘* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


Atheism, Manicheism, Polytheism,— and doubt it? 
Rarely, indeed, have we anything approaching an ele- 
vated and pure Monotheism, as the simple and un- 
doubting conviction of human reason, except among 
that little knot of modern Deists, who, somehow, never 
appear except where the Bible has gone before them ! 

And now, with such a belief, which 1 suppose is far 
enough from enforcing the doctrine of a Deity “ reckless 
of all moral considerations,” how stands the argument 
in which Mr. Newman and J are at issue? 

He believes that man’s notion of God is the projected, 
indefinitely enlarged image of man’s own intellectual 
and moral nature. In accordance with that, he declares 
that he rejects whatever facts of Scripture apparently 
attribute to God what we should call harsh, cruel, or 
unjust in man. I ask him, then, how he disposes of 
certain “facts” of the universe, which would be cer- 
tainly called harsh, cruel, or unjust in man? Instead 
of answering, and discriminating the facts, he forgets 
that the argument is founded entirely on his own 
premises, and represents me as believing in a God 
“yeckless of all moral considerations”! 

Mr. Newman says that he does not look at the uni- 
verse with “my gloomy eyes.” I reply that I do not, 
as I have just shown, look at it with “ gloomy eyes ag 
and that the facts in question appear gloomy only as 
seen through his spectacles; in other words, that the 
argument is purely founded on his own premises. My 
complaint is, that he will not look on certain facts of 
the universe by the light of his own hypothesis at all. 
His argument, again re-stated in this professed Reply, 
requires that he should give no account of those facts, 
and he accordingly gives none. As he says I have not 
permitted the reader to know what his sentiments are, 
I give them at length. 


HOW FAR I ‘*‘ INDORSE.”’ 39 


His words are: “ If we had no intelligence, we should 
have no idea of an Intelligent God any more than 
have the beasts. But, conscious of my own intelli- 
gence, | cannot imagine that the great Unknown Power 
from which it sprang is not far more intelligent. So, 
too, if we had no Moral Affections, it could never oc- 
cur to us to impute Moral Affections to God. But 
being conscious that I have personally a little love, and 
a little goodness, I ask concerning it, as concerning in- 
telligence, ‘ Where did I pick it up?’ and I feel an in- 
vincible persuasion, that, if I have some moral good- 
ness, the great Author of my being has infinitely more. 
He did not merely make rocks, and seas, and stars, and 
brutes, but the human soul also; and therefore I am 
assured He possesses all the powers and excellences of 
that soul in an infinitely higher degree. Hence it is from 
within that we know the morality of God. To the 
Author of ‘The Eclipse’ this seems such a piece of 
cant, that I deserve to be chained to a stake, and torn 
to pieces by a profane dog!”* On the latter part of 
this passage I shall make no other remark than to ex- 
press my hope and belief that Mr. Newman usually 
finds in himself a little more “ intelligence,” “goodness,” 
and “love” than appears there, or else I am afraid the 
inference to the infinite perfection of the: Deity would 
be rather precarious ; nor would it much matter where 
Mr. Newman “picked them up.” Of the “stake,” the 
“chain,” and the “profane dog,” I know nothing ; and 
if Mr. Newman will suggest to his readers ideas as 
little complimentary to himself as to me, it is his fault, 
not mine. 

But to look at his argument: Whether “ God has all 
the perfections of the human soul in an infinite degree,” 


* Reply, p. 35. 


40 A DEFENCE OF “** THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


I shall not dispute ; though I suppose, if Mr. Newman 
carefully reflects, he will see that there are several (and 
those among the noblest), which, if God be perfect, he 
cannot have at all; and among them gratitude, venera- 
tion, and all which constitutes adoration of Him. But 
at all events, though man unquestionably has an in- 
tellectual and moral nature, yet, somehow or other, both 
are very variously developed, — are susceptible, as 
facts abundantly show, of all sorts of deflections from 
the true and the right, and lead to correspondent “ pro- 
jections” of the Deity. The representation is, in fact, 
just one of the half views with which Mr. Newman’s 
books abound. It is one thing to say that man’s na- 
ture truly developed by appropriate external training, 
and especially by that which I believe is essential, but 
which he declares impossible, an external revelation, 
sees in the then polished mirror a faint image of some 
of the Infinite Perfections of God; and quite another 
to say, that each man, looking exclusively within, can 
at once rise to the conception of those infinite perfec- 
tions. The fallacy is at once seen when we appeal to 
facts. Numberless questions may be asked, to which 
the theory gives no answer. As, for example, whether 
Mr. Newman alone, or a few like him, are in a condi- 
tion thus to “project” the Deity, or whether all man- 
kind have the same privilege? or if all mankind have 
not, who has? Whether all the different gods which, 
acting on that very principle, they have projected, are 
truly gods, and to be worshipped? Whether, in that 
case, we shall not have “ Gods many and Lords many,” 
— most of them wnmoral and even immoral enough? 
Whether these variable deities, the product of the 
variable condition of human nature in different ages 
and nations, nay, even in the same individual at differ- 
ent periods, does not prove that man at least needs a 


HOW FAR I “ INDORSE.”’ 41 


light more pure than that of nature, and a guide more 
safe than reason, whether he can get them or not? 
Whether, if the greater part of “these Gods many and 
Lords many” are to be rejected, there is any criterion 
whereby to judge whose projection is the true one? 
Whether Mr. Newman has anything to show that his 
“ projection” of the Deity is, amidst so many differ- 
ences, the only true projection? But I stay to ask 
none of these questions here, though only to ask them 
is to show the precariousness of his hypothesis. I am 
willing, for the argument’s sake, to take his hypothesis; 
for whether God has all the perfections of the human 
soul or not, I fully agree with Mr. Newman, that at 
least His power, wisdom, and goodness are infinite ; 
but then it is precisely because I think so that I hesitate 
to allow that the “ little wisdom,” and “little goodness,” 
and “little love,” which give us the inkling of such at- 
tributes, are competent to say in all cases what God 
certainly will and can do with rectitude and goodness, 
and what he will not and cannot. Now Mr. Newman 
assumes the contrary; for he expressly tells us, that in 
virtue of his “little wisdom” and “little goodness,” 
man is “ competent to sit in moral and spiritual judg- 
ment on a professed revelation, and to decide, if the 
case seem to require it, in the following tone :—‘ This 
doctrine attributes to God what we should call harsh, 
cruel, or unjust in man; it is therefore intrinsically in- 
admissible ; for if God may be (what we should call) 
cruel, he may equally well be (what we should call) a 
liar; and if so, of what use is his word to us?’ ”* 
Very well; then the Universe of God is a revelation 
of him; that is the next step; and if this criterion 
(purely internal be it remembered, and, what is still 


* Reply, p. 22. 
1l 


42 A DEFENCE OF “* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


worse, necessarily varying with the moral condition of 
him who applies it) be absolutely true, then I say, with 
Harrington (and so far I fully “indorse” his reason- 
ing), that the “little wisdom” and “little goodness” 
will justify man in saying the same of all such phe- 
nomena in the works and ways of God as are, to all 
appearance, no less opposed to our moral intuitions, 
—to our conceptions of equity and goodness, — than 
the objected difficulties of Scripture. Mr. Newman, 
for example, will have it that God could not have com- 
manded Abraham to sacrifice his son, as an exercise 
of his obedience, even though He did not permit the 
sacrifice, because it is inconsistent with man’s “little 
wisdom” and “little love of goodness” to suppose it. 
I ask, then, how he makes it consistent with those 
same infinitesimals, that God, every day and all day 
long, and in all parts of the world, does things and 
allows things to be done equally baffling to the con- 
ceptions of those same infinitesimals ; involving inno- 
cence and guilt in indiscriminate suffering, and per- 
mitting the infliction of all-unutterable wrongs, with- 
out an attempt.to prevent, or, in this world, to redress 
them ? 

He sends his pestilence, and produces horrors on 
which imagination dares not dwell; horrors not only 
physical, but indirectly moral; often transforming man 
into something like the fiend so many say he can never 
become. He sends his famine, and thousands perish, 
—men and women, and “the child that knows not 
its right hand from its left,” —1in prolonged and fright- 
ful agonies. He opens the mouth of volcanoes, and 
bakes, boils, and fries the population of a whole city 
in torrents of burning lava. He opens the yawning 
earth, and crushes and mangles men, women, and chil- 
dren, with as little ceremony as a lion would crunch a 


HOW FAR I ‘* INDORSE.”’ 43 


i 


kid between his jaws. I am speaking of facts, very 
dreadful, no doubt, but they cannot be denied, can 
hardly be exaggerated, and are not likely to be dimin- 
ished by our shutting our eyes to them. Diseases, 
again, in infinite forms, in endless variety of anguish, 
are racking and torturing, crushing and grinding, myri- 
ads of human beings in all ages and countries, and in 
every moment of the world’s history, apparently with- 
out any reference whatever to the moral worth or turpi- 
tude of those who suffer. “ The discipline,’ as Har- 
rington truly says, in as far as our little wisdom and 
little love can see, is “often most agonizing in those 
who seem least to need it, or in those who are past 
learning from it, or in the innocents who cannot learn 
from it!” * 


* I know it may be said, in the presumptuous jargon of a certain school 
in our day, that “famine and pestilence” may be altogether prevented — 
in time ; in short, that it is through wise man’s ignorance, and by his fault, 
that they ever come at all! If it were so, the time for banishing them has 
been long in coming, and I rather think is still remotely future ; though I 
thankfully acknowledge that it is in man’s power, and becomes his most 
solemn duty, to diminish the probability of their occurrence, and to miti- 
gate them when they come. Still, as long as he does not know how to an- 
ticipate the next week’s weather, and all the z/uwminat: of Europe are so 
long puzzling their heads over cholera and the potato disease alone, with 
so little power to solve their mystery, Iam afraid we are still a consider- 
able distance from the sanitary millenium. And when men have found 
out (if they ever do find out) these riddles, it is to be feared from the 
analogies of the past that new “developments ” of nature, which now pre- 
sent us with diseases our fathers never dreamt of, will furnish man with 
new nuts to crack. The “subtlety of nature,” as Bacon terms it, will be 
found too hard for his little godship. However, as respects the present 
argument, if it were ever so true that, towards the end of some millions of 
years, man could prevent these evils, it would not remove one iota of the 
difficulties which attach to a constitution of things by which millions of 
millions of the race had suffered such an infinity of sorrows, because men 
had lacked a little “sanitary ” science, or show why he was doomed to 
such a long curriculum to attain it. 

“ Atheist” or “ Pagan” as Mr. Newman thinks me, I acknowledge I 
am often equally astonished and scandalized at the “vain boastings” of 


44. A DEFENCE OF ‘¢ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


The evils God permits are as incomprehensible as 
those He inflicts. He smites a man with madness, 
and the maniac cuts the throats of his innocent wife 
and children. He gives a man an idiot for his son, 
and the idiot with a laugh burs down his father’s 
dwelling. He assigns a poor innocent a vicious, in- 
temperate father, and he bears about him for threescore 
years the miserable heritage of his father’s vices. He 
lets some savage tyrant — nay, a succession of them 
—fill a whole country with groans, and tears, and 
broken hearts, and curses. He lets the infamous slave- 
dealer buy his living cargoes, and consign them to all 
the agonies of the Middle Passage; and His patient 
Omnipotence stands silently by, while, in a living death 
of weeks or months, they long for “the death which 
comes not,” and would bless that tornado which should 
send them to the bottom,—a tornado which, per- 
chance, falls on some slumbering city, or sinks the 
avenging cruiser instead. Is not God good then, even 
in these things? Yes, I say; yes, with an unfalter- 
ing faith; but I believe it, and cannot see it; these 
things are what we should call “harsh, cruel, and un- 
just in man,” and are utterly incomprehensible to our | 
“little wisdom,’ and “little goodness,” and “ little 
love”; just as His command to exterminate the Cana- 
anites, though not so perplexing, nor a tenth part so 
perplexing, is also incomprehensible. But I believe 
that God is good in spite of these facts. Mr. New- 
man, on the other hand, says in effect, “I believe the 
last-mentioned fact incredible, because it contradicts 


science; which, after all, with all its vaunted attainments, gives us but the 
alphabet of the universe. I suppose, as “pestilence” and “ famine’’are 
to vanish, some philosophic quacks will next promise us—like him of 
whom Horace Walpole tells us — an excellent “ pill” against earthquakes, 
or a patent for an engine to “put out” volcanoes ! 


HOW FAR I ‘* INDORSE.”? 45 


my moral and spiritual convictions of what God would 
do. It attributes to God what would ‘be harsh, cruel, 
and unjust in man’; and therefore I must reject it; the 
other facts I can see are quite consistent with all the 
said convictions.” Try your hand on them, then, I 
say, and show it. Show that they would not be 
“harsh, cruel, and unjust in man,” equally at war with 
man’s “little wisdom,” “little goodness,” and all the 
other little things. What! God’s command to Abra- 
ham more incomprehensible than many of the things 
He does and permits? It can only be because the ob- 
jector does not give himself time to dwell adequately 
on the things that are done and suffered to be done by 
the Universal Ruler in all parts of the earth in all ages. 
I have heard one of the most benevolent physicians de- 
clare, as he has seen a patient wear out long years of 
agony in cancer,—agony which it was agony only 
to witness, — agony which was all remediless and all 
fruitless (as far as man could conceive), — that he would 
have accepted with rapture a permission to put an end 
to the scene of sorrow; which it was infinitely more 
mysterious to him that God should suffer, than that he 
should have given the command to Abraham. But, at 
any rate, Mr. Newman must show the difference be- 
tween the cases. If he says, It is true God may do 
such things himself, but he could not command Abra- 
ham to do them, because Abraham had a moral nature, 
so and so constituted, —let Mr. Newman take heed ; this 
would be a queer proof that God’s moral nature was 
like that of Abraham (from which resemblance alone 
Abraham inferred what God was), that He could and 
might do the things which for that reason He could 
not command Abraham to do.— The reasons, then, 
which make certain facts of the universe conformable 


to Mr. Newman’s intuitions, and certain facts of Scrip- 
iL’ 


46 A DEFENCE OF °* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


ture not conformable, must be given. That is all I ask. 
Instead of complying, Mr. Newman turns round and 
says, “He perceives that I believe in an unmoral 
Deity!” Let us see whether I do; but whether, at the 
same time, Iam not rather more consistent than he in 
the uniform exercise of faith. 

When the young bride walks to her home with sun- 
shine in her heart and on her path, and all life is full of 
promise and of hope before her, — what is God then? 
Good, we say. And what is He when we see the 
same bride smitten down, and carried to the sepulchre 
almost before the bridal chaplet has withered in her 
hair, and her widowed husband returns to his desolate 
hearth with a broken heart? What is God then? 
Good, I say; O, doubtless good! but in strong faith I 
say it, not because I can comprehend it; for man’s 
“little wisdom” and “little goodness” would never 
have thus clouded the young dawn of hope and love. 
And when the young mother, in ecstasy of maternal joy, 
clasps her blooming child to her bosom, and blesses 
God for the life He has given, what is God then? 
Good, I say. And what is He when the same mother 
watches, in agony and tears, through weeks of wasting 
sickness, the same young face from which the bloom 
has all departed, and begs, but begs in vain, as she 
gazes on sufferings which, after all, but faintly reflect. 
her own, that God would be pleased in mercy to re- 
sume the life He had given? What is God then? 
Good, good, I say still; though thus to have searched 
and wrung the fibres of a mother’s heart would have 
been harsh and cruel in man, with “his little wisdom ” 
and “his little love”’ “I find no difficulty,’ Mr. New- 
man must say, “in allowing that God can do all this 
in harmony with my ‘intuitions’ of equity, justice, 
and goodness; but I cannot believe that, for any pur- 


._ HOW FAR I ‘* INDORSE.”’ 47 


pose in tne wniverse, even for the instruction of all 
ages, he would half as much have tried the ‘heart of the 
faithful patriarch.” I say, why? I beseech you, why ? 
Instead of answering, Mr. Newman says, “I perceive, 
sir, you believe in an wnmoral Deity.” 

And when the “ gentle west wind ungirds the bosom 
of the earth,” and flowers and blossoms spring forth at 
its bidding, and all nature laughs in the sun, and 
in the prophecy of plenty, — what is God then? Good, 
all nature says, rejoicingly. But when the “heavens 
are brass,” and the “earth iron”; or the “winds of 
death” cover the ocean with wrecks, suffocate the cara- 
van in the desert, or fill the city with sickness and pes- 
tilence ; or locusts strip in an hour the fruits of God’s 
bounty and man’s industry, and leave his creatures to 
die, —what is He then? Good, still I say; I doubt it 
not, — good and just and holy still. But, “O God! 
clouds and darkness are round about thee,’ and man’s 
“little wisdom” and “little goodness” cannot pene- 
trate Thee; I believe, but cannot see, that “justice and 
judgment are the habitation of thy throne.” Shrouded 
in tempest, thy path tracked with earthquake, and 
pestilence, and famine, “how unsearchable are thy 
judgments, and thy ways past finding out!” I do not 
see, virtually replies Mr. Newman,—I do not see that 
these “natural events,’ comprehensive, and as far as 
we can see undiscriminating, as are the ruin and the 
agony they bring, are anything but what may be quite 
made to harmonize with man’s notions of what is just, 
and good, and kind; but I cannot believe that the God 
who can blamelessly do all these things, irrespective of 
degrees of guilt,—nay, to millions who could have 
none, — would have ever enjoined the destruction of 
the Canaanites, let “their iniquity have been ever so 
full” Why so? I ask; how do you discriminate the 


48 A*DEFENCE OF “* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


two classes of facts, so as to show that, though the one 
would be harsh and cruel in the light of our moral and 
spiritual judgments, the other would not be? “TI per- 
ceive,” is still Mr. Newman’s only answer, —“ I per- 
ceive, sir, that you believe in an wnmoral Diety.” 

Why, so laughable is the misrepresentation of the 
argument, that, as I have said, it is not even true that 
Harrington does so. He sees and admits that the only 
solution may be true; but then he consistently applies 
its possible relief to both classes of phenomena, or to 
neither: he says, “If it be said that there may be rea- 
sons for such apparent violations of rectitude, which 
we cannot fathom, I deny it not; but that is to ac- 
knowledge that the supposed maxims derived from the 
analogies of our own being are most deceptive as ap- 
plied to the Supreme. It is to remit us to an act of ab- 
solute faith, by which with no greater effort, nor so great, 
we may be reconciled to similar mysteries of the Bible.” * 

Mr. Newman says that I “admit the difficulties of 
the Scripture facts to be insoluble”; I answer, that 1 
admit that some of them are, except by that which 
makes both them and the parallel difficulties of the 
universe soluble; by a reference to a power, wisdom, 
and goodness infinitely greater than our own, and 
which requires that we can be allowed only partially 
to judge of God’s character, rights, and jurisdiction. 
Harrington admits them also to be insoluble, but only 
for the sake of argument, as he expressly says:— 
“ Now, whether the Bible represents God, or not, in all 
these cases, as sanctioning the things in question, I shall 
not be at the pains to inquire, because I am willing to 
take it for granted that Mr. Newman’s representation 
is perfectly correct” ;f but he also expresses his con- 


* Eclipse, p. 159. t Ibid. p. 149. 


HOW FAR I ** INDORSE.”’ 49 


viction that the difficulties in question are neither so 
great nor so numerous as many of the parallel diffi- 
culties in nature; and here I fully “indorse and con- 
firm’ his argument. But I do not admit that either 
the one class of difficulties or the other invalidates the 
conclusion, from a vast preponderance of proof, exter- 
nal and internal, that God is holy, just, and good. 
Such is my defence — I venture to say, a consistent 
one — against Mr. Newman’s representation, which I 
do not wonder that many should think a ruse to escape 
from an inconvenient dilemma. ‘This passionate itera- 
tion of my belief in an wnmoral Deity, is the only 
answer that Harrington gets to his argument, and I 
rather think the only answer Mr. Newman is likely to 
give. If not, there it is; let him try his hand upon it. 
If Mr. Newman attempt an answer to these stupen- 
dous difficulties by saying that God must act according 
to “ general laws,” which necessarily involve an infini- 
tude of misery in their application, he carries the argu- 
ment only one step further back; for then, of course, 
he is requested to tell us why God must act according 
to such general laws; and whether he can demonstrate 
that Infinite Power, Wisdom, and Love could not con- 
struct a world without an infinity of sorrow in it, or 
even a world without any sorrow at all? He tells us 
in “ The Soul,” “that, when the flesh of a martyr is ag- 
onized by the flames, God gives the fire power to burn 
him, not because He wishes it on that particular occa- 
sion to burn, but because it is better to adhere to a fixed 
system, so that the element which burns at one time 
should burn also at another.’* But can he demon- 
strate the necessity of a “ fixed system,” in which there 
should be martyrs to burn, and cities to be swallowed 


* Soul, p. 37. 


50 A DEFENCE OF “* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.’ 


up.alive by earthquakes and baked in volcanic lava? 
Let him not say again that I doubt any more than he 
that “a good God reigns over all”: I doubt it as little 
as he can do; and I am only anxious to show that the 
difficulties against which we must all contend are of 
the same nature and of equal insolubility — only a 
thousand times more numerous — with the parallel dif- 
ficulties of Scripture. If he attempt to remove them 
by his theories respecting the origin of evil, I laugh 
—just as Harrington does, and as everybody else must 
do — at the complacent flourish of his little metaphysi- 
cal conjuring-wand. Mr. Newman’s petty theories 
throw no light on this great mystery; as little as if he 
brought a farthing candle to illumine the dread abyss 
out of whose yawning archway the icy waters of an 
Alpine glacier sullenly rush into day. 

He says, indeed, with the same instinct for keeping 
at a safe distance from the argument, “ What hinders 
me from saying that I know all these facts, and I do 
not see that they prove Paganism? What hinders me? 
—is it only the intense dogmatism of a fictitious per- 
son, who blusteringly rules that (whatever I pretend to 
the contrary) the Facts of the universe are Pagan?” * 
Who said that they prove Paganism ? — who said they 
proved an “immoral Deity”? What Mr. Newman 
has to show is, that these facts are, not merely believed 
to be reconcilable with equity and goodness; (J believe 
it as much as he can, though I see it not ;) but to prove 
that these facts are reconcilable with equity and good- 
ness, and that the parallel difficulties of the Scripture 
are not. When he has shown that, he will have said 
something to the purpose. 

Now if he ask what shall “ hinder him” from simply 


* Phases. Reply, p. 27. 


HOW FAR I ** INDORSE,’’ 51 


affirming, without proving, that, I reply, I know not 
what will hinder him from so acting, because it is easy 
to see that very few things can hinder so wayward a 
logic as his from coming to any conclusion whatever ; 
but 1 know what ought to hinder him, and that is, 
Reason and Modesty. But, at all events, till he can 
show that the appalling facts which the history of 
Providence presents are more reconcilable with man’s 
“little wisdom, goodness, and love” than the facts he 
objects to in the Bible, it will be as well (as he does at 
present) to keep silence on the matter; for if he says 
he can resolve the problem, and does not, there is not 
one out of a million’ that will not believe him egre- 
giously mistaken. If he can solve the problem, the 
sooner he sets about it the better. But it will not be 
enough simply to call these “ natural” events.* 

To call the “events ” in question “ natural,” (such as 
the earthquake at Lisbon, the destruction of Catania, 
and so on,) is to slur over the difficulty. They occur, — 
we know that too well, if that is what is meant by 
“natural.” But the perplexity is to reconcile them with 
our moral notions of the equitable and the kind. If it 
be said the general tendency of such events may be 
beneficial, though attended with exquisite misery and 
destruction to thousands, the question returns, how it 
can be reconciled with our notions of equity, to make 
thousands “ exquisitely miserable” to secure a benefit 
to some other thousands, or some multiple of them. 
Lastly, if it be said, “It is doubtless very unfortunate, 
but even Infinite Power, Wisdom, and Goodness could 
not do any better,” that is to beg the question, and to 
remit us to a faith which will not be apt to stumble 
at the few parallel difficulties of the Bible. The only 


* Reply, p. 26. 


52 A DEFENCE OF “THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


other escapes are by Atheism (or Pantheism) and 
Manicheism. Of these I have said little in “ The 
Eclipse of Faith” ; but not because I have nothing to 
say, as I may aeaiane show hereafter. The “ Chaos 
of Faith” might furnish as ample and as instructive a 
theme. 

Mr. Newman tells us, that “his faith in the moral 
qualities of the Infinite Deity does not rest” on the 
“sterner facts” of the universe.* I should think not. 
Did ever anybody’s faith rest on the very difficulties 
which oppose and try it? Once more; what he has 
to show is, that those facts are consistent with that 
faith, while those of Scripture are not. 

Mr. Newman, indeed, hints at an answer aii he 
seems half afraid to resort to; and wisely ; for doubt- 
less he felt the frail ice Res: under him. He tells 
me that “ I demand, as a reasonable preliminary, that 
we will approach the Book with the very same reverence 
as we approach the Universe, and will asswme that the 
Book is the ‘ Word’ of God as surely as the Universe 
is his ‘ Work.” + Ido not want him to asswme either ; 
but if he means that I think it reasonable to apply his 
internal criterion of what is to be rejected as unworthy 
of God (a test derived exclusively from our moral in- 
tuitions) equally to the alleged Works and alleged 
Word of God, —I answer, to be sure I do, if I am to 
apply his own criterion at all, and that criterion is 
worth a button,— namely, that what we should feel 
to be in man harsh, cruel, or unjust, we reject as at 
once unworthy of God. If this be true, there is no 
help for it. If this criterion is to be absolutely trusted, 
then it will be equally applicable to the big “world” 
and to the little “ book,’ —to the works and to the 


* Reply, p. 36. Tt Ibid. p. 30. 


HOW FAR 1 “* INDORSE.”’ 53 


words of God. It is, in fact, strictly applicable to 
neither, and for these very sufficient reasons; first, 
that men themselves are not agreed that any such cri- 
terion will apply (as these very controversies sufficiently 
show) to all that God can rightfully do; and, secondly, 
that men do not agree as to what are the “moral and 
spiritual” intuitions by which they can measure God; 
but all “nations, kindreds, and people,” making gods 
after their own “ corrupt minds,” have manufactured 
for themselves a variety of deities, most of them wn- 
moral and immoral enough. 

Mr. Newman has a curious comment on Harring- 
ton’s brusque dismissal of his little theories for getting 
rid of the difficulties connected with the permission of 
such an infinitude of physical and moral evil ;— “ those 
awful forms,” as the sceptic calls them, which Mr. New- 
man, with his accustomed candor and felicity, translates 
to mean “the horrible phenomena of Nature which. 
suggest the immorality of God.”* Harrington says: 
“TI certainly know of no other man who has stood so 
unabashed in front of these awful forms. One almost 
envies him the truly childlike faith with which he 
waves his hand to these Alps, and says, ‘ Be ye re- 
moved and cast into the sea’; but the feeling is ex- 
changed for another, when he seems to rub his eyes, 
and exclaim, ‘ Presto! they are gone sure enough!’ 
while you still feel that you stand far within the cir- 
cumference of their awful shadows.” f 


* Reply, p. 33. 

t Mr. Newman says: “ The author of ‘The Eclipse’ admits that the 
charges of immorality which he so vehemently urges against the God ot 
Nature (!) press with equal weight against the God of Christianity.” I 
need not say that I urge no such charges against either the God of Nature 
or the God of Christianity. The reader, I dare say, understands by this 
time, — though it is convenient for Mr. Newman to forget it, — that the 
argument is purely hypothetical, and on the assumption of Mr. Newman's 

12 


\ 


54 A DEFENCE OF ‘* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.’ 


Mr. Newman, for reasons best known to himself, 
printed the last words in italics, and the personal pro- 
noun “you” in capitals; and then asks, “ On which 
then of us two has an Eclipse of Faith fallen?” What 
wonderful power of refutation is to consist in the capi- 
tals I know not, the meaning of the passage being 
plain enough without any such emphasis,— that in 
spite of Mr. Newman’s curt formule of conjuration, 
you, gentle reader! I, and every one, are encompassed 
in those shadows which the dread mystery of the “ origin 
of evil” has cast on every spirit that has ever pro- 
foundly meditated it, and which Faith, and nothing 
but Faith, relieves. 


premises ; that if, as he says, the God of the Bible is chargeable with im- 
moralities, the charge must be extended to the God of Nature, for he does 
the same things. “If I tell him,” says my critic, “ that the intended sacri- 
fice of a first-born son did not deserve eulogy; he has no reply whatever, 
except that the God of Nature is equally atrocious.” I need not say that 
the word “atrocious” is Mr. Newman’s, not mine. I may here take notice 
of a convenient abridgment of Mr. Newman’s. In lieu of quoting Har- 
rington’s illustration of the difficulties which are “found” in the adminis- 
tration of the universe, Mr. Newman says, “ What are found? I cannot 
quote such diffuse writing at full; but it is, ‘ things which shock the moral 
sense as flagrantly immoral, and which Mr. Newman must reject as not 
sanctioned by God’ He presently (p. 152) gives, as examples, the earth- 
quake of Lisbon and the plague of London, which are thus laid down to 
be flagrant immoralities, which not only will make Mr. Harrington an 
atheist or pagan, but (he adds) ought to make me such, if I am consistent.” 
(Reply, p. 26.) Here Mr. Newman, who complains that people do not 
quote enough of him, cannot quote such diffuse writing as “ The Eclipse 
of Faith.” However, short as is the passage in single inverted commas, 
it is rather too much; and though given as Harrington’s statement, it is 
not his, nor do I accept it; as before and all along, Mr. Newman quite 
forgets that the argument is founded on Mr. Newman’s own principles ; 
that if the things he objects to in the Bible be “immoral,” the things cited 
by Harrington are so. One as hasty as himself might ask here, Who is 
guilty of “stealthy misrepresentation,” and “gross garbling”? But I 
do not; the eccentricity of Mr. Newman’s logic shall still entitle him to 
charity. / 


THE THEORY OF ‘* PROGRESS.” 55 


SECTION III. 


WHETHER MR. NEWMAN’S THEORY, THOUGH HE MEANS 
IT NOT, DOES NOT INVOLVE THE CONCEPTION OF AN 
IMMORAL DEITY. 


Havine defended myself from the grotesque charge 
of having pleaded for an wnmoral or immoral Deity, let 
not Mr. Newman imagine that Iam content to let it 
end with defence. With more reason I make reprisals. 
Though I will not imitate Mr. Newman’s injustice, by 
representing him as consciously pleading for an “ im- 
moral Deity,” I do contend that it is his theory, not 
mine (notwithstanding all his moral and spiritual intu- 
itions), which directly involves the notion. 

I believe in the God of the Bible; I believe in a 
God who created man holy, innocent, and happy, re- 
flecting his image, and participating in his felicity ; and 
that when God created him he said of him, as of all 
else that came immediately from his hand, that his 
creature was “very good.” JI believe in that God, if 
that is to believe in an immoral Deity; but what sort 
of God is it which Mr. Newman’s theory requires ? 
Why, one who is supposed to have launched man into 
the world, not only with a nature no better than he 
possesses now, but in a condition worse than that of 
the worst idolater, as the starting-point for that long 
curriculum of “ Progress,” in which “the old barba- 
rism” and “ methodized Egyptian idolatry ” are to be 
supposed hopeful epochs and notable stages of im- 
provement from his original condition! “ The law of 


56 A DEFENCE OF “THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


God’s moral universe,” says Mr. Newman, “as known 
to us, is that of Progress. We trace it from old 
barbarism to the methodized Egyptian idolatry, — to 
the more flexible polytheism of Syria and Greece,” — 
(is the worship of Baal and Astarte, of Venus and 
Bacchus, the most hateful and fearful exhibitions of 
the corruptions of man, veiled under this polite pe- 
riphrasis ?)-——“to the poetical pantheism of philoso- 
phers, and the moral monotheism of a few sages” ;* 
— the last term not being of the nature of a return in 
the right direction after deflection from it, but a grad- 
ual ascent from the depths of something worse than 
Plato’s Cave, —a gradual advance from the “ old bar- 
barism” and “ Fetichism” to which the Theory of 
Progress remits us. In such a condition is man sup- 
posed to’ have made his début, on this most hopeful of 
all theories of God and the universe! It is certainly 
not my idea of a moral Deity, — for it is not, thanks be 
to God! that of the Bible,—that the Deity chucked 
his human offspring into the world, such in his origi- 
nal nature as he is now, with all its infirmities, and 
such in his condition that an Egyptian idolater, adoring 
his Apes, his Cats, and his Onions, might regard him 
with compassion, as not having yet reached his own 
happy religious improvements on the primeval “ bar- 
barism”! Deliberately doomed, ab initio, to grope his 
way through unnumbered ages, from the starting-point 
of Fetichism through all the horrors and cruelties of 
the darkest superstition, each stage is an improvement, 
it seems, on the original felicity in which a God of un- 
limited benevolence had fixed his lot!—the result be-- 
ing, that after ten thousand years or so— it may be 
much more (for aught Mr. Newman professes to be 


* Phases, p. 169. 


THE THEORY OF ‘* PROGRESS.”’ 57 


Pa 


able to tell us) —some score or two of philosophers — I 
fear lam exaggerating the number, or, rather, I hope 
it — may luxuriate in the delightful prospect thus un- 
folded of the beneficence and morality of the Deity! 
It is true, indeed, that Mr. Newman does not, so far as 
I can find, expressly sanction the old theory of man’s 
original savageism; but, as Harrington says, it is the 
necessary complement of the correspondent religious 
~ theory. For would it not be an absurdity to imagine 
a developed intellect and the lowest Fetichism,—a 
mind in full possession of its powers and a soul brut- 
ish enough to flatter itself that it was making “ prog- 
ress” as it passed through the preliminary stages of 
such Fetichism to the remote refinements of the Syrian 
or Egyptian idolatry? We must, therefore, fancy man 
feeling his way at once to the lowest elements of civili- 
zation and the most elementary conceptions of religion. 
And as savages make*no rapid progress (some philos- 
ophers say they cannot, and all history shows they do 
not) without instruction from without, and as by the 
supposition primeval man could not have any, it is 
hard to say how many ages he crawled before he 
walked, lived on berries and acorns before his first incip- 
ient attempts at cookery, yelled his uncouth gibberish 
before he made (if he could ever make) the refined dis- 
covery of an articulate language, and lighted on his first 
deity in the shape of a bright pebble or an old fish- 
bone, and was in raptures at the discovery! Or, rather, 
it is hard to say how the poor wretch ever survived the 
experiment of any such introduction to the world at all. 

Some philosophers have defined man as a laughing 
animal. Jam afraid that on this theory it was some 
ages before he found any thing to laugh at. It must 
have been very long before his “ differentia” appeared. 


I have said that Ido not know whether Mr. New- 
12* 


58 A DEFENCE OF ** THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


man would formally accept the hypothesis of the origi- 
nally savage condition of man; but it is obviously the 
only logical complement of the religious theory in 
question, and the mention of the “old barbarism ” 
would also imply it. Iam sure it will be admitted by 
any one admitting the religious theory, unless he is 
prepared to rush into the most outrageous incongru- 
ities. But whether Mr. Newman accepts it or not, I 
lay no stress upon it; that man began in the “ old bar- 
barism,” and in the condition of the lowest Fetish 
worshipper, is quite sufficient for me; the nature of the 
progress of the unhappy creature, from such a hopeful 
beginning, may be easily anticipated, and forms a melan- 
choly comment on the moral character of the Deity who 
is thus supposed to have sent man into the world, so 
strangely equipped for his destinies. The advocates of 
this “progress” often speak of it as if it were like the 
“progress”? of a happy child under the guidance of a 
wise and beneficent father, or our “ progress” in sci- 
ence, where each step is an advance, and unattended 
with regrets; whereas this progress is tracked all the 
way through with tears and slaughter, groans and 
curses, ignorance and impurity, the most hateful cruel- 
ties, the most degrading superstition. If perfectly in- 
nocent man was ab initio doomed to such a curricu- 
lum as this, (and what its remaining term, if Christian- 
ity indeed be false, and not destined to abridge it, no 
mortal can tell,) can any one say with a safe con- 
science that he thinks this theory relieves the difficul- 
ties of the Bible? On this hypothesis, the fearful con- 
dition of our world is not a calamity, not a thing to be 
deplored, not the shadow of sin thrown across it, but 
the natural evolution, the spontaneous product, of crea- 
tive energy and unlimited love. I say, and say it fear- 
lessly, that this Juggernaut which a fantastical Theory 


THE THEORY OF ‘* PROGRESS.’ 59 


of Progress presents us with, is what men will not be- 
lieve in, and that they would sooner become Atheists 
than do so. 

No; if this be the idea of a moral Deity, — of in- 
finite Power, Wisdom, and Goodness manifesting their 
creative energies, —I thankfully acknowledge it re- 
ceives no countenance from the Bible. It is not there 
that I find that man entered the universe as a “ bar- 
barian” and Fetish-worshipper, who might envy the 
beasts themselves. Let but the imagination duly 
dwell on the picture of innocent man making his ap- 
pearance, under the benediction of an infinitely benefi- 
cent Creator, in the condition of one of the aborigines 
of Australia, — with similar tatters of an understanding 
and conscience, little better than Lord Monboddo’s 
first monkey-man, only without the tail; and I defy 
any man to lay his hand on his heart and say that this 
is an improvement on the Bible theory of the “ Moral- 
ity of God.” 

And as such notions of the origin of man certainly 
give one a very queer idea of a moral Deity, not less 
strange is that given by Mr. Newman’s views of his 
destiny ; for, according to his theology, it is most prob- 
able that the successive generations of men, with per- 
fect indifference to their relative moral conditions, their 
crimes or wrongs, are all knocked on the head together, 
and that future adjustment and retribution is a dream. 
I believe, as the Bible tells me, that our God is a per- 
fectly righteous Governor; that He will “awake to 
judgment,” though He be silent long; that He is an 
exact observer of the moral character of men, and will 
treat them accordingly ; not willing to punish any, and 
when He does finally punish, (that at least is the dec- 
laration of the Bible, however we may dispute about 
some texts,) punishing only according to demerit in 


60 A DEFENCE OF ** THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


this life. According to Mr. Newman’s theory, a moral 
Deity is formally and precisely what man, even with 
his “little wisdom and goodness,” considers as the 
very type and essence of an immoral Governor ;— one 
to whom the despot and his victim, — the oppressor 
and the oppressed, — the Neros and the Howards, — 
the Hayleys and the Uncle Toms, are alike indifferent ; 
or, rather, by whom the former are often better treated 
than the latter, being allowed to flourish “like the 
green bay-tree,’ and swept away at last, along with 
their victims, by the “ besom of destruction,” into one 
common oblivion! And all for what, once more? 
For little more, so far as can be discovered, than this, 
—that a few philosophers may, after a million of years 
or so, arise to establish this delightful idea of a moral 
Deity ; they, in like manner, after enjoying this satis- 
factory glimpse, being destined to pass away for ever !* 
One thing I am perfectly certain of, that this theory of 
the future is so utterly untenable with the notions of a 
moral Deity possessed of a moral nature at all like 
our own, that any one who has got as far as Mr. 
Newman’s “fixed moral basis,” and is capable of pur- 
suing a principle to its consequences, will say, “ Hither 
I must give up the idea of a moral Deity altogether,* 
or I must reyect Mr. Newman’s views of man’s immor- 
tality.” 

It is vain to say that the Bible also has its difficulties 
on the subject of the permission of evil, and the destt- 
niesofman. Itis true. Whattheory has not? But I 
feel, as Harrington urges, that the theory we have just 


* If Mr. Newman says, that he has left the question of immortality 
doubtful, it does not affect this argument; for, as he admits the probability 
of there being no Future Life, he must be prepared to vindicate the ad- 
ministration of his moral Deity on that supposition. The cord cannot be 
stronger than its weakest part. 


THE THEORY OF ‘* PROGRESS.’ 61 


considered indefinitely aggravates them all. ‘The Bible 
theory does, at all events, represent man as created in- 
nocent, and holy, and happy, and does noé shut the door 
against the possibility of God’s proving himself a moral 
Governor; — on the contrary, assures us that He will 
prove himself an exact one. Now, since the above 
curious theory is devised to supplant the Biblical theory, 
and for the benefit of those who are invited to abandon 
the latter, it is of no use to plead the Biblical difficul- 
ties, while its own are greater. 

Every syllable, therefore, of Harrington’s argument 
on the God of Mr. Newman’s theory, (I believe Mr. 
Newman’s conception happily does not correspond to 
his theory,) I do “indorse and confirm.” I say with 
the sceptic, — “It is not even true that the difhculties 
in question are left where they were by the adoption 
of any such theory as that of either Mr: Parker or Mr. 
Newman..... According to their theory, I must be- 
lieve that God cast man forth, so constituted by the 
unhappy mal-admixture of the elements of his nature, 
— with such an inevitable subjection of the ‘idea’ to 
the ‘conception, of the ‘ spiritual faculty’ to the ‘de- 
graded types,” — that for unnumbered ages — for aught 
we know, myriads of ages — man has been slowly 
crawling up, a very sloth in ‘progress,’ (poor beast) 
from the lowest Fetichism to Polytheism, — from Poly- 
theism, in all its infinitude of degrading forms, to im- 
perfect forms of Monotheism; and how small a portion 
of the race have even imperfectly reached this last 
term, let the spectacle of the world’s religions at the 
present moment proclaim..... For this gradual trans- 
formation from the veriest religious grub into the spir- 
itual Psyche, man was expressly equipped by the 
constitution of his nature,— he was created this 
grub. For all this truly geological spiritualism, and 


Ge. A DEFENCE OF ** THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


for all the infinitude of hideous superstitions and cruel 
wrongs involved in the course of this precious develop- . 
ment, Mr. Parker tells us there was a necessity,— 
nothing less!”* “For this, then, man was created; 
such a thing he was,— through this ‘ ordeal’ he passes, 
—by original destination. If this be the picture of 
the Father of All, he is less kind to his offspring than 
the most intimate ‘intuitions’ teach them to be to 
MMC, SOs. If I am to abjure the Bible because it 
gives me unworthy conceptions of the Deity, I must, 
with more reason, abjure, on similar grounds, such a 
detestable theory of man’s creation, destination, and 
history.” + 

When Mr. Newman, therefore, says I “ pollute and 
defile his God,” I deny it. I hope and believe that he 
does not realize his own theory; but I say that, re- 
garded as a moral Deity, the Deity of his theory — 
the Moloch of Progress — cannot be defiled or polluted. 
It is not the God of the Bible; it is not the God of 
Nature, which is silent as to any such intimations 
either of the origin of man or the administration of 
the universe ; and the general convictions of men in all 
ages, When framed in obedience to those moral intui- 
tions, to which Mr. Newman so confidently appeals, 
prove that such a God is not the God of human con- 
sciousness ! 

Such, however, are the difficulties into which our 
deistical philosophers are perforce led, and of which 
they will never get rid. Discarding the revelations of 
the Bible with contempt, they yet are compelled to 
give us a book of “ Genesis” of their own, and a book 
of “ Revelation”; amd in doing so present us with 
theories of the origin, primeval condition, and destiny 


* Hclipse, pp. 160 - 162. t Page 163. 


THE THEORY OF ‘* PROGRESS.”’ 63 


of our race, not only purely conjectural and abundant- 
ly contradictory, but unspeakably more difhcult to be- 
lieve than that of the Bible itself; and such, let Mr. 
Newman: be assured, that men will sooner become 
atheists than adopt. 

It is in vain for Mr. Newman to say, that we Chris- 
tians endeavor to destroy every “ third” possibility be- 
tween the Bible and Atheism. This third possibility 
— such a God as he describes —is felt by the best in- 
stincts of man to be none at all, but an absolute in- 
credibility. They cannot worship the Deity which this 
theory of Progress presents them with, and would 
sooner become stark atheists at once. Mr. Newman 
says that Mr. Holyoake has lectured on his book, and 
“behaved with courtesy and generosity.” No doubt 
Mr. Holyoake will regard his books with leniency. 
He well knows whither Mr. Newman’s theory will 
lead, and what sort of converts it will ultimately make. 
The sportsman does not shoot his own pointer. 

Mr. Newman himself instructs us whither his “ fixed 
moral basis” is likely to carry him. He says: “A 
serious atheist like Mr. G. J. Holyoake holds moralty, 
as I do, to be a fixed certainty, but doubts whether 
there is any personal God. But Mr. Harrington is un- 
settled on both points.” I should have thought, by the 
way, that any reader of “ The Eclipse” must have 
been certain that he was not.* Mr. Newman goes on: 
“ With him morality has no fixedness ; indeed, he is 
insolent with me. because I treat it as an immovable 
foundation which I will not allow to be tampered with 
by any pretence of miracle; and he is equally uncer- 
tain whether there is any good God. ‘Thus, of my ¢wo 
principles, the real atheist, Mr. Holyoake, holds one, and 


* See his express disavowal of Atheism, Eclipse, pp. 164, 165. 


64 A DEFENCE OF “THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


the more fundamental one; but Mr. Harrington holds 
neither.” * I shall be heartily glad to hear that the 
words in Italics are an inadvertence; for amidst the 
variety of human judgments, a fixed basis of morality 
may easily be shown to be a quicksand without any 
personal God. 


In fine, in reference to the whole subject of these 
two sections, people will more and more say, — “ If 
the positive evidences for Theism, and the positive evi- 
dences for Christianity, be found of force, we cannot 
allow the parallel moral difficulties still besetting both 
to be treated on totally different principles. Reason 
for both, if you will, or Faith for both, if you will; 
but not Reason to object to the latter, and then Faith 
to digest the former. We will not be told that our 
reason is to bow to the one, and then to rebel against 
the other, because some man tells us that God cannot 
do this or that, when not only do we see that He does 
similar things (which you tell us are to be received by 
faith alone), but the generality of men themselves tell 
us that they can as soon apply faith to the one class of 
difficulties as the other.” This is the cage which But- 
ler provides for those who reject the Bible on account 
of a certain class of difficulties; and a fair way of es- 
cape must be found. 


nnn nnn ESEnnEEEn RISERS! 


* Reply, p. 25. 


EXIGENCIES OF DEISM. 65 


SECTION IV. 
THE EXIGENCIES OF DEISM. 


AND now, because I insist that there are facts in the 
universe of God as difficult to be accounted for, and 
as bafiling to man’s reason, as the facts for which the 
infidel so often rejects the Scripture; and because I 
insist that the image of the God they often “ project ” 
—though they intend it not— aggravates all those 
difficulties a thousand fold, —let Mr. Newman, if he 
will, reiterate his charge, that I am uttering “ profane 
scoffs against the God of Nature, which too clearly 
come from the heart ” : —to that I condescend to make 
no reply. My appeal is to Him who knows the heart, 
who knows mine, with all its infirmities, faults, and 
follies, and how much, how infinitely, it needs his 
compassion and forgiveness; but He knows this also, 
that it desires to harbor not one. disloyal thought to 
Him as “the King of kings, and the Lord of lords”; 
as “the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the Blessed 
and only Potentate”; not a thought that would im- 
pugn his infinite justice, wisdom, and goodness. 
These I believe perfect and infinite, on preponderating 
evidence, though I confess I cannot reconcile all the 
acts of his infinite government with the little meas- 
ure of man’s infinitesimal wisdom and _ goodness. 
These are my sentiments, in harmony, as I believe, 
with that Book which has reinforced what at best 
would have been, but for that, the faltering conclusions 


of my reason: as such conclusions have ever been but 
13 


66 A DEFENCE OF THE “ ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


faltering among all the nations that have been without 
it. I have said what I have said, only to prove the pre- 
carious grounds on which many infidels would chiefly 
persuade us to reject that Book, without even consid- 

ering the positive evidence for it; and to prevent some 
of my young countrymen from indulging presumptu- 
ous hopes, under the notion that “ God is altogether 
such a one as” themselves, or rather the variable thing 
several men would make him; sometimes with anal- 
ogous moral qualities and sometimes not; sometimes 
exercising a general providence only, sometimes a 
special one; sometimes this and sometimes that. I 
have spoken to prevent their resting in vain theories, 
which tell us, though professedly without authority and 
infinitely discordant, that God cannot do.this or that 
which he is reported to have done in the Scriptures, 
when we have but to open our eyes and see that he 
ean do, and does, like things equally strange; and to 
prevent their rashly casting away that light which wise 
heathen longed to see, and which would have been so 
welcome ;— light which.we must have (as the shifting 
course of human speculation shows), if we would con-_ 
front the mysteries in which the Divine government 
and our ignorance of the origin and destinies of man 
involve us. The face of God to guilty man resembles 
that of the sun,—that type and image of His glory; 
— in himself too bright for the dazzled eye to bear, he 
now bathes rejoicing. nature in the glowing tints of 
morning or the golden pomp of sunset, now piles the 
thunder-clouds about him and casts a lurid light upon 
the world from behind that stormy pavilion ;— and 
anon hides himself for days together within an im- 
penetrable curtain of wintry cloud and tempest. — 
Thrice welcome surely, under the changing aspects of 
the Infinite One, should be the message of Him who 


EXIGENCIES OF DEISM. 67 


came to make known to us the Father in disclosures 
equally “full of grace and truth ”. and to assure us, 
amidst the variable phenomena of the universe, that 
« He is without variableness or the shadow of a turn- 
ing.” 

That the Atheist should sullenly acquiesce in his 
ignorance, I can understand. Not that he is not the 
victim of an infinite fallacy, if he supposes (as he is so 
apt to suppose) that Atheism gives him any hostages 
against futurity; for if his stray consciousness has 
somehow wandered into this world, —we cannot say 
why, for none can know that on his hypothesis, — it 
may find its way into another world, not quite so eligi- 
ble as this. His next move, for aught he can tell, may 
be for eight thousand years into Saturn, with a hump 
on his back and a cancer in his stomach. But at all 
events he cannot help himself; he must take the 
“goods” not “which the gods provide ” him, but the 
goods, or perchance the evils, which necessity may sup- 
ply. He can only say, as to the one, * I need exercise 
no gratitude,” — pleasant thought!—and as to the 
other, “ I must exercise my fortitude.” 

The acquiescence of the Deist, considering the hope- 
less discordance of his theories and his utter darkness 
in relation to the origin and the destinies of man, I do 
not so easily understand. But one thing is clear, clear 
as the day, that human nature in general perfectly 
understands his pretensions, and has plainly shown 
throughout Europe for the last two hundred and fifty 
years, (where the Deist has often spoken under every 
advantage,) that it will have nothing to do with him; 
that it will not accept his guidance. Man asks, as I 
have before said, for a book of Genesis and a book of 
Revelation, and these the Deist cannot give. Reject- 
ing all authority, he: can, by the very terms of his 


68 A DEFENCE OF *‘ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.’’ 


theory, give only his own conjectures, and these are in- 
finitely discordant; and to one and all of them man 
asks, Who told you all this? It is in vain for him to 
say that nothing better than conjecture can be offered, 
becausé man feels this is the very thing he must escape. 
Thus the Deist’s inability to give any solution of ques- 
tions to which all history shows that man intensely 
craves, and will have, an answer, true or false, together 
with the discordances and vacillations of the systems 
of Deism in reference to the true theory of religion and 
morals, even within the little sphere of its ordinary 
speculations, prevents it from exercising any considera- 
ble influence. All facts show that, whomsoever man 
takes as his religious guide, he will not take the Deist. 
Hence the slow progress, or rather the no progress, 
which Deism has made since Lord Herbert’s time to 
this. Deism is always carting away what it calls rub- 
bish, and always digging foundations; but the prom- 
ised building never peeps above the surface of the 
earth, or if it does rise a few inches above it, the thing 
“of hay, wood, and stubble” is swept away again in 
the next tempest of controversy. If “ Christ speaks 
with authority and not as the Scribes,” the Deists in this, 
as in other respects, are diametrically opposed to him; 
for they speak as Scribes, and not with authority. To 
demonstrate simply the existence of a Being of infinite 
attributes, man feels is not sufficient for him. He 
wants to know his relations to that Being, and that 
Being’s aspects towards him ; for a profound con- 
sciousness on his own part, the deepest philosophy, and 
a million facts, assure him that there is something 
wrong in the world, — something “ out of course.” He 
turns to the Deist, who gives him a variety of con- 
jectures ; and that is all. 

Whether the Deist frames so peculiar a notion of a 


EXIGENCIES OF DEISM. 69 


“moral Deity,” as to suppose that God created the 
first man as a grotesque savage, doomed to ignorance, 
misery, vice, and superstition by the original constitu- 
tion of his nature, and that his almost equally luck- 
less children, after their “ few and evil days,” are (op- 
pressors and oppressed alike) consigned to indiscrimi- 
nate annihilation; whether he pleads, as many have 
done, that there is a future state, or, as many others 
have done, that there is none; whether he says, as 
some have said, that there is a happy immortality for 
a few, and a convenient annihilation for the many, or 
that all are at last to be brought, somehow or other, 
and some time or other, to a stable felicity ; whether he 
contends that God has moral qualities analogous to 
ours, or, with Bolingbroke, that He has not; whether 
he believes, with Bolingbroke, that there is no special 
providence at all, but only a general one, or, with 
others, that a general providence without a special one 
is an absurdity and contradiction ;— still, in these and 
numberless other cases, the question is asked, “ And 
which of these men am I to believe? and why?” 

Mr. Parker, for example, in the course of his “de- 
velopment,” seems at length to be in a little dubiety 
whether the phenomena of external nature will justify 
us in referring the entire universe to one only abso- 
lutely beneficent Deity. But it little matters; for he 
condescends to assure us, in a recent publication, that 
it will all come right at last. The tremors which may 
fill the heart when we commit the Atheist to the grave, 
and the tranquil hope with which we lay the sincere 
Christian there, are alike illusive; if the Atheist is not 
converted in this world, he will be in Jupiter or Sirius, _, 
or somewhere or other; and if not now, a thousand, or 
ten thousand, or a million of years hence! Mr. Parker 


is such aman! He can tell us such things! Is this 
13 * 


70 A DEFENCE OF ** THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


Universalism now a real communication from “ our 
own correspondent” in the future world? Is it some 
deep echo from the eternal abyss that salutes our ears, 
or is it the tinkle of the little bell which summons us 
to consult Mr. Parker’s private oracle? Alas! he does 
not tell us why an Atheist, who has been so for eighty 
years amidst the proofs of a God here, may not be one 
for a million of years, or for ever, supposing only proofs 
of the same moral kind to be given; or why he, who 
has persisted in spite of present laws to violate the 
conditions of his existence, may not continue to do so 
in perpetuity; or why, if he cannot be amended, he 
should not, as some say, be annihilated at death; or 
why, as others say, he should not be punished for a 
time, and then annihilated, but not “ restored”; or 
why, as yet others say, both good and bad should not 
be annihilated together at death; or why, in short, 
there is no end to conjecture, and this is all, avowedly, 
that Mr. Parker can give; for he rejects all external 
revelation. Why, then, should men believe Mr. Parker 
any more than anybody else? They may say, with 
Socrates, “ Hear a dream for a dream.” If the Deist 
replies, And why should the Christian expect his fellow- 
men to bow down to his dream? he answers, that he 
is not fool enough to expect or wish anything of the 
kind. He says, “It is not like your theory, one of 
many guesses; it is nothing of mine. Christianity 
professes to be founded on sufficient evidence, of vari- 
ous kinds, addressed to men in general; examine that 
evidence, and reject it, if you really find it insufficient ; 
but do not impute to the Christian the absurdity which 
you Deists are all practising ; that is, of giving us your 
divers guesses as if they were anything more than 
guesses, with as much dogmatism and confidence as if 
you could appeal to some external evidence; while, in 


EXIGENCIES OF DEISM. 71 


the very midst of reciprocally discordant theories, 
which, to us and to your fellow-deists who differ from 
‘you, can only rest on external evidence, you exclaim, 
that no such external evidence is accessible, or (as some 
of you say) even possible!” 

I faithfully promise to recant these taunts, when I 
find the faintest symptoms of Deism being a thing of 
influence, measured by any of the criteria by which we 
judge a thing to be so; when I find any the slightest 
appearance of internal cohesion or outward activity ; 
when I find as many of its votaries as make the small- 
est sect amongst Christians, professing approximate 
agreement in their own religious theory, or so far in 
love with it, as to make the minutest sacrifices of 
wealth or ease to render it triumphant;* when I find 
them taking the smallest islet of the Pacific, or the 
smallest tribe of barbarian idolaters, under their relig- 
ious teaching, and endeavoring to establish at least 
one little model farm of the true Deistico-spiritual cul- 
ture! But no; it is easier to stay at home, and talk, 
—and talk, and talk, and say that “faith is de- 
parted,” and “ Christianity obsolete.” I feel very much 
at my ease when Mr. Newman rebukes me for rebuk- 
ing Mr. Parker for his excessive latitudinarianism ; to- 
wards whom, Mr. Newman says, “1 am so scornful,” 


* It is easy, of course, to conceive of a combination (I am told there is 
one), not exactly “the propagation of” Deism “in foreign parts,” nor, in- 
deed, at home, but for the promotion of anything called “ Free thought,” 
between systems of Atheism and Pantheism, and that thrice-distilled 
Spiritualism, which nothing but the language of the Scriptures can satis- 
fy! Of course such combination would be simply destructive ; it would 
just set everything afloat, not fix anything. Many of our new theologians 
seem to think it is of little consequence what is believed, provided histor- 
ical Christianity is not. I almost fancy that, if some were asked, “ What 
is Truth?” they would reply, “ Truth consists —in the falsehood of his- 
torical Christianity.” 


72 A DEFENCE OF “THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.’’ 


because Mr. Parker has a “brother’s heart” towards 
the pagans whose happy “absolute religion” he cele- 
brates. 

No; I shall not go to Mr. Parker to learn “ charity,” 
but to a very different class of men; men who do not 
regard gross idolatry and superstition as very good 
things in their way, and all in their turn of signal 
service to the world! Nor is it because Mr. Parker has 
“a brother’s heart,” that I smile at his easy charity ; 
God forbid! but because the theories he patronizes 
have never stretched out yet a “brother’s hands.” 
That charity is but a cheap sort of charity which con- 
sists in talking and doing nothing; which sits at home 
by the blazing hearth, and in the happy homes of civ- 
ilization, and will not even pay emissaries to do its 
work, if itself cannot; which calumniates the Chris- 
tian, who is endeavoring to do for the world what the 
Deist never attempts to do, though he tells us he knows 
how it could be done: much better than by preaching 
“an historical Christianity ” ;—- who says to the perish- 
ing heathen, “ Be ye warmed, and be ye filled,” but 
neither warms nor fills them; or rather, perhaps, gives 
them the cold comfort, “ My good savage friends, you 
look very wretched; but you do not want warming, 
and you do not want filling ; — have you not the abso- 
lute religion? ‘T'ake it amongst you, and my blessing 
go with you.” 

And, indeed, though infinitely different, why should 
any of these accommodating theories of Deism exact 
a more expensive charity ? are they not all arguments 
for that same practical indolence, which, account for it 
how we will, has ever characterized Deism, and char- 
acterizes it still? What would a disciple of Mr. 
Parker, under the last Parkerian development, be prone 
to say, as he saw a band of idolaters at their dismal 


EXIGENCIES OF DEISM. 73 


rites on some savage shore? I think he would be apt 
to say, “ Well, these savages are ina miserable plight, 
to be sure, in spite of the absolute religion; but why 
should I trouble myself about the matter? it will all 
come right, some day or other, I have no doubt, in an- 
other planet, or in one of the fixed stars.” On the 
other hand, the Deist who thinks, with Mr. Newman, 
that immortality is most probably a delusion, would 
be tempted, perhaps, to say, “ Why, yes; it will all 
come right some day, no doubt, but not for the reason 
Mr. Parker supposes; but because all these poor 
wretches will be knocked on the head together.” 
Nevertheless, he might add, perhaps, “ I may as well 
give them a word of exhortation too, on Mr. New- 
man’s theory, as to what makes idolatry a crime. I 
hope,” he might say, “my dear savage friends, that 
you take care not to worship idolatrously that curious 
monster — I don’t know his name, but we should call 
him in England three Guys rolled into one — with the 
delightfully open mouth, and the great goggle eyes; I 
hope you take care that it does not fall below your 
ideal of Divinity; I beseech you not to worship it as 
perfect and infinite, if you do not feel it to be so. 
Always take care, my friends, that your worship does 
not fall below your ideal! Bearing that in mind, I 
will lay no further burden upon you; so fare you well.” 

But this subject is worth pursuing a little further ; 
and if I live, I will endeavor to show the Deist what 
are the conditions of his success, and what he must do, 
as well as say, before he can expect to make much im- 
pression on the world. 

As to the dreaded alternative of Atheism, I have no 
fear of it. If the history of the world and of man 
teaches anything, it is that men will not be Atheists ; 
and that, even if Arueism be the ‘Trutn, there is no 


14 A DEFENCE OF “THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


chance of its being established. Nor, on its own prin- 
ciples need it wonder at that; for if blind necessity 
or pure chance has framed the world, it has merely, 
as one would have expected, egregiously blundered ; 
has so pleasantly constituted the universe and man, 
that man cannot but believe there is a God, even 
though there be none! 


CHARGES OF ‘‘ MISREPRESENTATION.”’ 75 


SECTION V. 
CHARGES OF A “ MISREPRESENTATION” AND * GARBLING.” 


Anp now for the paraded charges of “ gross gar- 
bling” and “stealthy misrepresentation.” 

There are two subjects on which Mr. Newman more 
particularly insists that I have done injustice to his 
sentiments. First, as respects his theory of the rela- 
tions of Faith to Intellect, between which I have sup- 
posed him to wish to effect a “divorce”; and sec- 
ondly, as respects the relation of the religious faculties 
in man to the transmission, or external presentation 
to the mind, of religious truth. On the latter subject 
he gives an éclaircissement, not before it was needed, 
and still, I venture to say, requiring a further éclaircis- 
sement, as we shall presently see. But before proceed- 
ing to that, I will consider the charges of “ garbling” 
and “misrepresentation,’ and distinctly show that I 
have been guilty of nothing of the kind. Jf I have 
misunderstood him, it is only just as others — even 
many who are supposed more or less to sympathize - 
with him — have done; if we have all misunderstood 
him, it may be modestly conjectured that it was only 
because our author never understood himself. 

First, then, Mr. Newman says: “ This writer instils 
into his readers the belief, that I make a fanatical sep- 
aration between the intellectual and the spiritual, a 
‘divorce’ between them, and concludes that I hold 
that Faith need not rest upon Truth, and I ought to 
be indifferent as to the worship of Jehovah or of the 


16 A DEFENCE OF THE ‘* ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


image which fell down from Jupiter. He never quotes 
enough from me to let his reader understand what is 
meant by the words which he does quote.”* I say 
with an unfaltering conscience, that no controvertist 
ever more honestly and sincerely sought to give his 
opponent’s views, than I did Mr. Newman’s, after the 
most diligent study of his rather obscure books; and 
that whether I succeeded or not in giving what he 
thought, I have certainly given what he expressed. It 
is quite true that I supposed Mr. Newman intended to 
“ divorce” Faith and Intellect; and what else on earth 
could I suppose, in common even with those who were 
most leniently disposed towards him, from such senti- 
ments as these? “ ALL THE GROUNDS OF BELIEF PRO- 
POSED TO THE MERE UNDERSTANDING HAVE NOTHING 
TO DO WITH FAITH AT ALL.” ¢ “'THE PROCESSES OF 
THOUGHT HAVE NOTHING TO QUICKEN THE CONSCIENCE 
OR AFFECT THE souL.”t “ How then can the state of 
the soul be tested by the conclusion to which the intellect 
is led?” § Iwas compelled, I say, to take these pas- 
sages, as everybody else took them, to mean what 
they obviously express. Again, was I not compelled 
to regard Mr. Newman’s notions on the claims of Re- 
ligious Truth —as opposed to what he calls Sentiment 
— very lax, when I find him saying, that, though “ he 
knew not how to avoid calling Atheism ‘a moral 
error, yet we must not forget that it might be still a 
~ merely speculative error, which ought not to separate 
our hearts from any man.” || Was I not driven to the 
same inferences from his definition of idolatry, which 
he frames in such a way that it may be doubted 
whether there are any idolaters in the world? that is, 


* Reply, p. 18. t Soul, p. 223, 2d ed. 
t Soul, p. 245, 2d ed. § Soul, p. 30. 
|| Ibid. 


CHARGES OF ‘** MISREPRESENTATION.” 17 


that only those are chargeable with it, in any “ bad” 
sense, who knowingly degrade their “ideal” of the 
Divinity by consciously worshipping as infinite and 
perfect what is known to be imperfect and finite. Once 
more; how else was I to interpret that communion of 
the Faithful for which he contends in the “ Phases,” in 
which “sentiment,” not “opinion,” (the utmost vari- 
eties of which, as his reasoning shows, are all to be 
worked up into this new amalgam,) is to be the “ bond 
of union”?* Charity towards those who differ, every 
one can understand; but this new “family of love,” 
which is to be maintained, maugre all sorts of opin- 
ions, in virtue of identical “ sentiment,’—a sort of 
Noah’s ark, only with the proportions of clean and un- 
clean beasts reversed, seven of the latter to two of the , 
former, — is an impossibility per se. Once more, Mr. 
Newman approvingly says of what he conceives the 
spirit of the New Testament (I have nothing to do 
with his criticism) : “ By every writer of the New Testa- 
ment it is manifestly presumed, that the historical and 
logical faculties have nothing to do with that faith 
which is distinctive of God’s people. Everywhere it is 
either stated or implied, that the soul or spirit of man 
is alone concerned in receiving God’s revelation. Un- 
less we can recover this position, we have lost the 
essential spirit of apostolic doctrine; and then, by 
holding to the form, we do but tie ourselves to a dead 
carcass, which may poison us, and disgust mankind.” + 

But Mr. Newman says there were passages (and he 
cites one or two) scattered up and down his writings 
which are, more or less, inconsistent with such an hy- 
pothesis. I answer, that I have expressly admitted as 
much; for Mr. Newman is the last man in the world 


* Pages 72, 73, 2d ed. t Soul, p. 248. 
14 


78 A DEFENCE OF ‘“‘ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


to whom I would deny the benefit of having contra- 
dicted himself. I have said, speaking to Mr. Fellowes, 
“The divorce between the ‘spiritual faculties’ and 
the intellect, which your favorite, Mr. Newman, has 
attempted to effect, is impossible. It is an attempt 
to sever phenomena which coexist in the unity of our 
own consciousness. I am bound in justice to admit 
that there are others of our ‘modern spiritualists’ who 
condemn this preposterous attempt to separate what 
God hath joined so inseparably. Even Mr. Newman 
does practically contradict his own assertions ; and out- 
raged reason and intellect have avenged his wrongs 
upon them by deserting him when he has invoked 
them, and left him to express his paradoxes in endless 
perplexity and confusion.”* A similar assertion, that 
it is impossible for even the most “ fanatical spiritual- 
ist” to avoid using expressions at variance with the 
theory, may be seen at a subsequent page. T 

But whatever inconsistencies any such passages 
might present, is it any fault of mine that the above- 
cited clear, categorical assertions were taken to mean 
what they seemed to mean? and that, however incapa- 
ble of being harmonized with less absolute or obscure 
assertions in other places, here, if anywhere, was to be 
found Mr. Newman’s true theory of the relations of In- 
tellect and Faith? 

Mr. Newman says, that I do not quote enough to let 
the reader know his sentiments. I answer, that I know 
nothing more precise than the statements I have quoted, 
and I admitted that they were abundantly inconsistent 
with other passages. I ask, as I have already done, 
how’much of so peculiar a writer must I quote before 
the reader can be made acquainted with his sentiments ? 


* Eclipse, p. 306. t Ibid. p. 309. 


CHARGES OF ‘ MISREPRESENTATION.”” 79 


Similar observations apply to the related case of al- 
leged “gross garbling,” of which Mr. Newman accuses 
the Author of “The Eclipse.” It occurs in Harring- 
‘ton’s disquisition, who ascribes to Mr. Newman (I 
think naturally enough) a belief ina spiritual faculty 
of internal illumination in man, which “ supersedes, 
by anticipating, all external revelation, and renders it 
superfluous” ; or, as he elsewhere expresses it, “ antici- 
pates all essential spiritual verities.” This Mr. New- 
man declares to be “the direct and most intense re- 
verse of all that he has most carefully and elaborately 
written!” * 

Let us see. Harrington took what seemed the most 
precise statements imaginable. They are as follows : — 
« What God reveals to us he reveals within, through the 
medium of our moral and spiritual senses.” | “ Chris- 
tianity has practically confessed what 1s theoretically 
clear,” (Harrington adds, “ you must take his word for 
both,”) “that an authoritative external revelation of 
moral and spiritual truth is essentially impossible to 
man.” { “No book revelation can (without sapping 
its own pedestal) authoritatively dictate laws of human 
virtue, or alter our @ priori view of the Divine char- 
acter.?§ These are the passages which involve the 
imputed garbling. Of that anon. 

Mr. Newman also says, in a passage Harrington did 
not quote, (but which he might well have done, only 
that his object evidently was to give the briefest ex- 
pression of the dogma to be confuted,) what is yet 
stronger. In speaking of the apologies for the destruc- 
tion of the Canaanites as a judicial act, he observes: 
« But next, the analogy assumes most falsely, that God, 


Oe 


* Reply, p. 13. Tt Soul, p. 59. 
t Ibid. p. 59. § Ibid. p. 58. 


80 A DEFENCE OF ‘** THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.’? 


like man, speaks from without; that what we call 
Reason and Conscience is mot his mode of command- 
ing and revealing his will, but that words to strike the 
ear, or symbols displayed before the senses, are em- 
phatically and exclusively ‘Revelation.’ On THE con- 
TRARY, OF OUR MORAL AND SPIRITUAL GOD WE KNOW 
NOTHING WITHOUT, EVERYTHING WITHIN. IT 1s IN 
THE SPIRIT THAT WE MEET HIM, NOT IN THE comM- 
MUNICATIONS OF SENSE.” * 

Mr. Newman complains bitterly of a most elaborate 
contrivance to conceal his reasoning, of all which the 
Author of “'The Eclipse” had not the slightest con- 
ception. He says that Harrington in the citations on 
the preceding page omitted an adverb of inference, — 
“ Christianity has thus confessed,” — for the purpose of 
concealing traces of the preceding arguments ; — that 
Harrington has said, “you must take his word for 
both” the facts asserted in the second sentence, when 
Mr. Newman had “carefully proved them” ; —and that 
he has dislocated the order for the same reasons as he 


* Phases, p. 152. The two sentences in small capitals are not found 
in the new edition of the “Phases.” They are struck out. It is no doubt 
the right of an author to erase in a new edition any expressions he pleases ; 
but when he is about to charge another with having “grossly garbled,” and 
“‘stealthily misrepresented him,” it is as well to let the world know what 
he has erased, and why. He says that my representation of his sentiments 
‘is the most direct and intense reverse of all that he has most elaborately 
and carefully written.” It certainly is not the “intense reverse of all that 
he has most elaborately and carefully” scratched out. The above extract, I 
find, now begins in the new edition thus: “But next, the analogy assumes 
(what none of my very dictatorial and insolent critics make even the faint- 
est effort to prove to be a fact), that God, like man, speaks from without.” — 
pp: 92, 93. 

Ido not know what it was intended by his “very insolent and dicta- 
torial critics” (if he has any) to prove; but it was sufficient for me that 
my object was to disprove the dogma that any such external revelation 
was a priori impossible. Whether God has spoken in fact depends on the 
appropriate evidence. 


CHARGES OF ‘‘ MISREPRESENTATION.”’ 81 


omitted the particle. Let us hear Mr. Newman in 
full. 

“The reader will observe that the Author inserts 
a clause of his own, ‘you must take Mr. Newman’s 
word for both’; i.e. both for the fact that Christianity 
has confessed it, and for the fact that theory makes it 
clear. He thus informs his reader that I have dog- 
matized without giving reasons. And to deceive the 
reader into easy credence, he dislocates my sentences, 
alters their order, omits an adverb of inference, and 
isolates these three sentences out of a paragraph of 
forty-six closely printed lines, which carefully reason 
out the whole question.” * 

I answer, and will distinctly prove, that, however 
plausible this statement, not one of the facts is sus- 
ceptible of the interpretation Mr. Newman has put 
upon it. First, the omission of the adverb of inference 
was not for the reason assigned by Mr. Newman; it 
was simply because, as the whole context in Har- 
rington’s speech shows, he wished to give at the out- 
set, in the briefest form, the conclusions against which 
he was about to contend by a distinct class of argu- 
ments of his own; no matter whether it was “thus,” 
or otherwise, or in no way at all (as I believe it was), 
that Mr. Newman arrived at them. That this was the 
object is clear from the omission of the last, longest, 
and strongest quotation now supplied. It was of no 
more consequence, in the mere stating of the question 
to be discussed, that Harrington should make reference 
to the supposed arguments by which Mr. Newman came 
to the contested conclusion, than that, in enunciating 
any other proposition, which we are about to confute 
by totally different arguments, we should encumber it 


* Reply, p. 21. 
14* 


82 A DEFENCE OF ** THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


with the reasons alleged for it. All that is necessary 
at that stage is to give a precise statement of the dis- 
puted thesis in the words of the author; and this Har- 
rington gave in three of the clearest and most explicit 
statements that could be found. 

But Mr. Newman further complains, that Harring- 
ton says the reader must take Mr. Newman’s word for 
both the alleged facts in the citation, —“ whereas he 
had carefully proved and reasoned out the whole ques- 
tion.” I answer, that Harrington’s statement expressed 
his real conviction, —though another form of expression 
might have been more precise, — that what Mr. New- 
man calls his “careful proofs” were in his estimate, and 
are still in mine, words, words, and nothing but words. 
What he dignifies by the name of arguments are as- 
sertions, and nothing more. I now say, “you must 
take his word” for the above conclusions, and I proceed 
immediately to prove it. I will engage to make good 
every word I utter. In order to do so, it will be neces- 
sary to cite the professed reasonings. After saying, 
what I will not dispute, that “no heaven-sent Bible 
can guarantee the veracity of God to a man who doubts 
that veracity,” — and also, which, for argument’s sake, 
I as little dispute, that “unless we have independent 
means of knowing that God knows the truth, and is 
disposed to tell it to us, his Word (if we be ever so cer- 
tain that it is really his Word) might as well not have 
been spoken,” — he proceeds, with prodigious strides, 
thus: “But if we know, independently of the Bible, 
that God knows the truth, and is disposed to tell it to 
us, obviously we know a great deal more also: we 
know, not only the existence of God, but much con- 
cerning his character. or, only by discerning that he 
has virtues similar in kind to human virtues, do we 
know of his truthfulness and goodness. Without this 


CHARGES OF ‘** MISREPRESENTATION.”” 83 


a priori belief, a book-revelation is a useless imperti- 
nence; hence no book-revelation can, without sapping 
its own pedestal, authoritatively dictate laws of human 
virtue, or alter d@ priori views of the Divine character. 
The nature of the case implies, that the human mind 
is competent to sit in moral and spiritual judgment on 
a professed revelation, and to decide (if the case seem 
to require it) in the following tone:— This doctrine 
attributes to God what we should call harsh, cruel, and 
unjust in man; it is, therefore, intrinsically inadmissi- 
ble; for if God may be (what we should call) cruel, 
he may equally well be (what we should call) a liar; 
and if so, of what use is his Word to us! And in fact, 
all Christian apostles and missionaries, like the Hebrew 
prophets, have always refuted Paganism by direct at- 
tacks on its immoral and unspiritual doctrines; and 
have appealed to the consciences of heathens, as com- 
petent to decide in the controversy. Christianity itself 
has thus practically confessed what is theoretically clear, 
that an authoritative external revelation of moral and 
spiritual truth is essentially impossible to man. What 
God reveals to us, he reveals within, through the me- 
dium of our moral and spiritual senses. External 
teaching may be a training of those senses, but affords 
no foundation for certitude.” * 

He then proceeds in the “ Reply ” thus: — 

“ Of this passage, the first six sentences carefully 
prove that a book guaranteed by God is worthless to a 
man who has no convictions concerning the heart of 
God, and in consequence, that it is necessarily inca- 
pable of overturning and reversing moral judgments. 
After thus proving it to be ‘theoretically clear, I add, 
‘and in fact, &c., and go on to show how Christians 


* Soul, pp. 58, 59. 


84. A DEFENCE OF *“* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


have actually proceeded. Then I sum up: ‘ Christian- 
ity itself has ruvus practically confessed what is theo- 
retically clear” &c. The omission of the word Tuus 
by this author shows his deliberate intention to de- 
stroy the reader’s clew to the fact, that I had given 
proof where he suppresses it, and says that I have given 
none.” * 

Now, before saying a word further, may it not be 
asked, in relation to the above assertions, What evi- 
dence would satisfy anybody in the world that the 
Apostles confessed that an authoritative revelation of 
moral and spiritual truth was impossible to man, when 
they, at the very moment, professed to be giving it, — 
claiming men’s obedience to it and receiving. their 
homage, — making known, as they said, “what eye 
had not seen, nor ear heard, nor had entered into the 
heart of man to conceive”? But, not to content my- 
self with such an appeal to the reader’s common sense, 
let us test it by experience. There is some savage can- 
nibal, I suppose, who is ready to gobble up his fellow- 
man; or a worthy creature who puts his children out 
of the way with as little remorse as you would drown a 
kitten ; devoutly worshipping at the same time a wooden 
thing, which certainly is not the “ likeness of anything 
in heaven above, nor the earth beneath,” and so far does 
not infringe upon the second commandment. Well, 
you naturally think his “ moral and spiritual” percep- 
tions somewhat out of sorts. The missionaries, worthy 
souls, succeed in convincing him of his abominable 
errors and in amending his practice. “ Ah!” then 
cries the savage, “I see a thing or two. It is true that 
you found me dining upon my neighbor, and quite 
ready to dine upon you; murdering my children, and 


* Reply, p. 23. 


CHARGES OF “S MISREPRESENTATION.”” 85 


living in all sorts of licentiousness and beastliness 
without compunction. Yet let me tell you, Mr. Mis- 
sionary, you could not have given me a ‘revelation’ of 
all this error unless I had had faculties which could be 
educated to the perception of it; and I therefore con- 
clude that an authoritative revelation of moral and 
spiritual truth is impossible +” What, think you, would 
the missionary reply? I apprehend something like 
this: —“ My good Mr. Savage that was, I perceive 
you have a little of the savage about you still; or at 
least I should say so, only I perceive that it is possible 
for highly civilized folks to be of the same way of 
thinking. Just as it is because you are a reasonable 
creature and not an idiot, that I can instruct you in 
anything, so it is because you had a spiritual faculty, 
—-though, as your sentiments and practices too plainly 
showed, in a very dormant state, — that a revelation 
was possible ; not impossible, my good friend. It was 
because your faculties were asleep, not dead, that I 
could awaken them; had you mot had those faculties 
which, you so strangely say, render a revelation impos- 
sible, it would have been impossible: it was possible 
only because you had them.” ‘Thus, I imagine, the 
missionary would answer; and thus Apostles would 
have answered, instead of befooling themselves by say- 
ing, that that very authoritative revelation, which they 
declared they came to make known,—to which they 
claimed obedience, and to which men actually submit- 
ted, — was impossible! Thus, Mr. Newman’s “ care- 
ful proof” is a mere texture of cobweb, which cannot 
be touched without falling to pieces. 

If men had no eyes, the perception of light would 
be impossible; but if they had eyes, it were equally 
impossible to have that perception except the light 
shone upon them. Hence the apparent paradox re- 


86 A DEFENCE OF “* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”? 


mains true, that man has capacities which enable him 
to apprehend a revelation when propounded, and never- 
theless that the capacities do not and cannot render the 
revelation impossible. And hence, too, Harrington’s 
argumentum ad hominem remains:—“I do not see 
how we can doubt, on the principles on which Mr. 
Newman acts and yet denies, that a book-revelation of 
moral and spiritual truth is very possible ; and, if given, 
would be signally useful to mankind in general. If 
Mr. Newman, as you admit, has written a book which 
has put you in possession of moral and spiritual truth, 
surely it might be modestly contended that God might 
dictate a better. Hither you were in possession of the 
truths in question, before he announced them, or you 
were not; if not, Mr. Newman is your infinite bene- 
factor, and God may be at least as great a.one: if you 
were, then Mr. Newman, like Job’s comforters, ‘has 
plentifully declared the thing as it is’ If you say, 
that you were in possession of them, but only by im- 
plication; that you did not see them clearly or vividly 
till they were propounded,—that is, that you saw 
them, only practically you were blind, and knew them, 
only you were virtually ignorant; still, whatever Mr. 
Newman does, (and it amounts, in fact, to revelation,) 
that may the Bible also do. If even that be not pos- 
sible, — and man naturally possesses these truths ex- 
plicitly as well as implicitly, — then, indeed, the Bible 
is an impertinence,— and so is Mr. Newman.”* Let 
Mr. Newman fairly answer the dilemma. 

But the strangest thing is to see the way in which, 
after parading this supposed “artful dodge,” — which 
I assure you, gentle reader, was alla perfect novelty to 
my consciousness, — Mr. Newman goes on to say, that ~ 


* Eclipse, pp. 88, 89. 


CHARGES OF ‘* MISREPRESENTATION.”’ 87 


the Author of “ The Eclipse” has altered the order of 
his sentences to suit a purpose. He says, “ The sen- 
tences quoted as 1, 2,3 by him, with me have the order 
3, 2,1.” I answer, as before, that Harrington was sim- 
ply anxious to set forth at the head of his argument, in 
the clearest and briefest form, the conclusions he be- 
lieved Mr. Newman to hold, and which he was going 
to confute. He had no idea of any relation of sub- 
ordination or dependence in the above sophisms, as | 
have just proved them to be, whether arranged as 3, 2, 
1, or 1, 2, 3, or 2, 3, 1, or in any other order in which 
the possible permutations of three things, taken three 
and three together, can exhibit them; ex nihilo, nihil 
jit: and three nonentities can yield just as little. 
Jangle as many changes as you will on these three 
cracked bells, no logical harmony can ever issue out 
of them. But they may do very well, perhaps, for 
the tumble-down steeple and cracking walls of the 
church in which one of our spiritual reformers may 
dispense the new doctrine. 

And now for Mr. Newman’s four inferences from the 
whole, which he introduces with so much solemnity. 

1. “ That I feel so painfully the pressure of his rea- 
soning, that I dare not bring it forward.” 

Answer. I was and am as unconscious of any pres- 
sure, as was the ox in the fable, of the fly who sat on 
his horn, and who politely hoped that he gave him no 
inconvenience. “I should not have known you were 
there,” said the ox, “if you had not told me of your 
presence.” 

2. Mr. Newman says, that “since I have not im- 
pugned his arguments, but have suppressed them, and 
told my readers that he has given none, a sufficient re- 
ply on his partis to reprint them, and to warn people 
that merriment may be founded on fiction.” 


88 A DEFENCE OF ‘*‘ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


Answer. ‘That, since I have now certainly not sup- 
pressed his soi-disant “careful proof,’ but confuted 
it, a sufficient reply on my part is to remind people 
that there are other reasons for not noticing arguments 
besides their being incontrovertible. 

3. Mr. Newman says, “it will be seen that he should 
need to write folios to expose tricks of this kind.” 

Answer. Very likely ; if, as in the present case, he 
is to imagine the tricks before exposing them. 

4. Mr. Newman says that it is in “the long para- 
graph just quoted, that, according to the discerning Au- 
thor of ‘ The Eclipse of Faith, he makes himself merry 
with the subject of a book-revelation.” 

Answer. 'The “discerning Author” of “'The Phases” 
is mistaken in supposing that he is represented as 
making himself merry with a book-revelation im that 
paragraph, nor does the Author of “The Kclipse” say 
that it is there that Mr. Newman does so. On the 
other hand, it would be easy to cite many passages 
in which Mr. Newman speaks most contemptuously of 
what he calls “ Bibliolatry,” and this would be called, 
in ordinary parlance, making merry with the subject. 

Mr. Newman loudly denies, by the way, the truth 
of this charge brought against him in conjunction with 
Mr. Parker, and says that “I wish my readers to sup- 
pose him as flippant as myself” I really have no 
wishes on the subject, and willingly leave the reader 
to form any opinion on the point he thinks proper.” 
_ Perhaps, however, it would have been more accurate 
to say, that Mr. Newman, instead of making himself 
merry with the idea of a book-revelation, had made 
other people very merry by his arguments against its 
possibility. 


* See “Soul,” pp. 57, 240-248; Phases, pp. 117, 118, 132, 2d ed.; or 
the chapters entitled “ The Religion of the Letter renounced,” and “ Faith 
at Second-hand found to be Vain,” passim. 


A DISTINCTION. 89 


SECTION VI. 


WHETHER MR. NEWMAN’S DISTINCTION OF MORALLY 
AND SPIRITUALLY “ AUTHORITATIVE” AND MORALLY 
AND SPIRITUALLY “INSTRUCTIVE” WILL STAND. 


Ir would appear, then, from all this, that Mr. New- 
man still maintains that an authoritative book-revela- 
tion is impossible to man; and as for his complaint, that 
I had omitted to notice the “arguments” by which he 
proved his assertion, I have now, I should hope, suffi- 
ciently shown their futility. But how, then, does he 
attempt to obviate the reasoning by which Harrington 
shows that, if it be impossible to God, it is at all events 
possible to man, since Mr. Newman has furnished that 
to Mr. Fellowes which it seems God himself could not 
have given to Mr. Newman?* “Surely,” says Mr. 
Newman, “the author means merely that Mr. Fel- 
lowes found my book instructive. If so, with what 
sort of honesty can he pretend that I do not admit 
the Bible to be instructive?” Answer. I do not deny 
that he admits the Bible to be instructive, as he imme- 


* “The latter,” says Mr. Newman, “‘is the cardinal fact adduced by the 
historical genius of our author, who here, as elsewhere, desires to found 
the spiritual upon the legendary, and abhors the basis of moral truth.” 
(Reply, p. 23.) I answer, that “here, as elsewhere,’ Mr. Newman 
finds it necessary to misrepresent my sentiments. Read, instead of the 
above clauses, that “I do not deem man competent, and Mr. Newman 
singularly ¢ncompetent, to determine all necessary spiritual truth apart 
from the ‘historical, not the legendary, revelation of God’s Book, and that 
I distrust the ever-variable theories of truth which unaided reason has so 
plentifully supplied,” and you will be near the mark. 

15 


90 A DEFENCE OF ** THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


diately proceeds to allow ; but I admit that he is incon- 
sistent in doing so, if his theory be true that “we know 
nothing of God from without, everything from within.” 
“ But,” he goes on to say, “if I ever so much despised 
the Bible, have I ever inculcated that all books, as 
such, are worthless, so as to be confuted by the bare 
fact of writing a book at all?”* Let us look at the 
principle involved. 

It appears that there is a convenient distinction to 
be made between what is morally and spiritually 7- 
structive, and what is morally and spiritually authort- 
tative. I answer, in sound only; not in meaning. 
For to convince any one, who believes in a God and 
moral and spiritual truth at all, of any moral and 
spiritual truth, —no matter how the man who imparts 
it came by it, —whether he got it direct from heaven, 
or it has percolated through a hundred minds before it 
reached his, —is ipso facto to make it authoritative in 
the sense that it is felt it ought to have authority ; 
though whether it will have it, will depend marvel- 
lously upon whether it be believed to come certainly 
and immediately from God or not. He who knows 
what he means when he talks of God and his claims, — 
man and his duty, — will smile at the paradox of any 
moral or spiritual truth being proved to him, — no 
matter how or by whom,—while yet it is considered 
optional with him whether he shall regard it as merely 
instructive and not authoritative! The experimentum 
crucis, therefore, which Harrington .proposes to Mr. 
Fellowes, remains just as it was. Belo wes acknowl- 
edges that he once thought, as did Mr. Newman, that 
various current doctrines of Christianity were true; 
but confesses, as does Mr. Newman, that he sees them 


* Reply, p. 24. 


A DISTINCTION. 91 


to be wholly false, and (like that of a Mediator) mor- 
ally “mischievous.” If so, the new light must be 
authoritative with him. Well, then, if Mr. Newman 
can thus communicate truth, which is not only instruc- 
tive, but, being “ spiritual and moral,” must in the na- 
ture of things be felt to be authoritative (whether 
obeyed or not), much: more is it possible, one would 
imagine, for God to do the like, —to do it infinitely 
better, and to do it with infinitely greater probability 
of its being, as well as being acknowledged to be, au- 
thoritative ; — as Christians believe he has done. But 
Mr. Newman says it is impossible that such a revela- 
tion can be given. Therefore the reasoning remains, 
that Mr. Newman has given that to Mr. Fellowes 
which it seems God himself could not give to Mr. 
Newman. 

Take a simple example, and the whole fallacy ap- 
pears ina moment. You find a Tahitian, or a New- 
Zealander, quite as a matter of course, and thinking no 
harm in the world, ready, the one to bury his new-born 
child, or a dozen of them, and the other to bake and 
eat his enemy taken in war, or perhaps a worthy gen- 
tleman just shipwrecked on his coast; both the one 
and the other evincing, in all sorts of ways, that their 
“moral basis” is a very queer one. And so it goes on 
for ages: you convince them—no matter how you 
got your truth, though I suspect that, if you got your 
truth in two ways, you will not get the requisite zeal 
to go and proclaim it but in one —that all this is 
wrong; and you instruct them, but it is on subjects 
which, being moral and spiritual, involves the “ought”; 
and every truth they admit necessarily becomes au- 
thoritative in the sense that it is felt it ought to have 
authority. It may be error that is so taught, —as 
when superstition teaches, and, as I believe, when Mr. 


92 A DEFENCE OF “* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


Newman often teaches; but such is the nature of the 
things taught, and their relation to the conscience, that 
it is no longer simply information, in the sense in which 
it is instructive, to tell them how to make shoes, or that 
the earth goes round the sun, and not the sun round 
the earth. If, therefore, man, by convincing his fel- 
lows even of error as truth on such subjects, not only 
makes it, as his pupil supposes, instructive, but authori- 
tative, — as we see, in fact, he too often does, — a forti- 
ori, he can do it when he teaches his fellows truth, — 
as we also see he can; much more, therefore, may one 
humbly imagine that God can externally communicate 
truths which will be both instructive and authoritative. 
The argument, therefore, remains as Harrington puts 
it, “ Why,’ said Harrington, “while you were with- 
out the truth, as you say you were, it was not likely to 
be authoritative: if, when you have it, it is recognized 
as authoritative, — which you say is the case with the 
truth you have got from Mr. Newman,—if you ac- 
knowledge that it ought to have authority as soon as 
known, that is all (so far as I know) that 1s contended 
for in the case of the Bible.” 

But Mr. Newman comments most oddly on the con- 
cluding paragraph of the work, in which I express a 
hope that the discussions may convince the “ youthful 
reader of the precarious nature of those modern book- 
revelations which are somewhat inconsistently given 
us in books, which tell us that all book-revelations of 
religious truth are superfluous, or even impossible.” 
Here Mr. Newman pleasantly infers that I intend to set 
the Bible as an authoritative revelation and such books 
as his own on a level; and that Iam “palpably and 
inexcusably dishonest” if I do not! “ Here, then,” 
says he, “ we have the author without a mask. Let us 
‘consider what he avows:—1. That he is satisfied to 


A DISTINCTION. 93 


have the Bible regarded as a ‘book-revelation’ in that 
sense, and in that sense only, in which my writings are 
‘ book-revelations’ to those whom they happen to 
convince. If he does not mean this, the words are 
palpably and inexcusably dishonest.”* I cannot even 
imagine how my thinking, as I well may, book-revela- 
tions “ precarious” which declare all book-revelations 
“impossible,” are yet book-revelations in that sense, 
and in that only, in which I believe the Bible (which ~ 
talks no such nonsense) is one. On the contrary, in- 
stead of being palpably and inexcusably dishonest if I 
did not mean what Mr. Newman says I must mean, I 
should be so if I did. No: there is a@ sense, as I have 
just now shown, in which Mr. Newman’s writings, 
being on “spiritual” and “moral” subjects, will be 
authoritative with the persons—JI rather think they 
will be a small flock—whom they “may happen to 
convince.” If his proselytes know what they are talk- 
ing about, the “moral and spiritual” truths (or errors) 
of which he convinces them will be recognized as what 
ought to have authority ; just as those who think the 
Bible comes from God will acknowledge the same of 
what they find in that; but as to the Bible being in 
that sense, and in that only, a book-revelation in which 
Mr. Newman’s volumes are to those “whom he may 
happen to convince,’ Mr. Newman must pardon me. 
There is a vast interval between truth and error; what 
only seems moral and spiritual truth (while it seems 
so) is authoritative, though it may be most perniciously 
misleading; it is authoritative on the well-known prin- 
ciple, that “ even an erroneous conscience obliges.” 

In admitting that books on spiritual and religious 
subjects may be instructive, Mr. Newman admits all 


* Reply, p. 27. 
i 


94. A DEFENCE OF ‘ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


that is essential to the argument. Jnstructive’ Yes: | 
but if books be so instructive as to teach men who 
have no scruple in banqueting on their fellow-creatures, 
—in strangling their new-born infants, —in exposing 
their parents, —that all these things are “ abomina- 
tions,” —then in such instruction is shown plainly the 
possibility of an external revelation; it is to teach 
men to recognize doctrines which were before unrecog- 
nized, — to realize truth of which they were before un- 
conscious, — and to practise duties they had never sus- 
pected to be duties before. If this be so, then the 
argument returns, that what man can do, God can 
surely do,,and do much more effectually, both as re- 
gards the things taught, and the manner of teaching 
them. Will it be any gain to Mr. Newman’s argu- 
ment to say, that a book of Divine “revelation” of 
moral and spiritual truth is impossible to man, but that’ 
he never meant to deny that a book of Divine “in- 
struction” in moral and spiritual truth was possible ? 

The concession of these principle, that from without 
there may come a light which may develop into act 
the latent moral and spiritual capacities of our nature, 
is sufficient for the overthrow of his dogma, “that an 
authoritative revelation of moral and spiritual truth is 
essentially impossible to man.” 


RELIGION AND MATHEMATICS. 95. 


SECTION VII. 
MR. NEWMAN’S ECLAIRCISSEMENT. 


One more remark, and I proceéd to consider the 
value of that éclaircissement which Mr. Newman gives 
of his doctrine, and whether it really makes any differ- 
ence to the argument. 

The reader must remember, that in reality Mr. New- 
man adheres to the statement in the previous quota- 
tions from the “ Soul.” He still asserts, it seems, that 
no external revelation can alter our 4 priori notions of 
the Deity or dictate laws of virtue. If there be then 
a priort notions, did I do his views injustice? Must 
not these a@ priort notions already exist before the 
revelation is given? and since they cannot be altered 
by it, must they not “ anticipate, and supersede by an- _ 
ticipating, that revelation”? The fallacy consists in 
confounding notions with capacities for arriving at 
them,—— in supposing, in contradiction to fact, (as I 
have endeavored to show in the discussion on the pos- 
sibility of an external revelation,*) that the original 
capacities of man, which may be dormant or active, 
well or ill developed, according to the nature and the 
eficacy of the external instrument of their extrication, 
are not mere capacites, but definite a priori notions, 
which everywhere enable man at once to pronounce on 
the truth or falsehood of whatever professes to be an 
external revelation. Any such notions do not in strict- 


* Eclipse, “ On a Book-Revelation,” p. 283. 


96 A DEFENCE OF ‘* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


ness exist till an external influence elicits them, and 
though the capacities be in the soul, yet, whether they 
be normally developed or not depends, as we see in 
fact, on the character of the educating instrument ; 
and all sorts and almost all degrees of abnormal de- 
velopment are too plainly very possible according to 
the imperfection of that instrument. ‘T'o say that the 
external revelation does not modify the action of these 
latent capacities, would of course be notoriously false ; 
and the substitution of capacities for notions at once 
discloses the fallacy lurking under the imposing dogma 
we have been considering. 

With these remarks, let us consider Mr. Newman’s 
further explication of his theory. He affirms that my 
representations of his views on this subject are “ the 
direct and most intense reverse of all that he has 
most elaborately and carefully written”! He still 
says, “What God reveals, he reveals within and not 
without”; and he did say, (though, it seems, he says 
no longer,) that “of God we know everything from 
within, nothing from without”; yet he says I have 
grossly misrepresented him, for that in the “ Soul” 
he has “dwelt largely on the historical progress of 
Religion, and has shown how each age depends or- 
dinarily on the preceding.” * Well, if Mr. Newman 
will engage to prove contradictions, and that God 
reveals himself exclusively from within, though each 
age, notwithstanding, depends for its views of religion 
on the preceding, I think it is no wonder that his 
readers do not understand him. I took what seemed 
the plainest of his declarations, and dealt with them. 
I allowed, as I have said, that Mr. Newman’s views 
were inconsistently expressed. This, Mr. Newman 


* Reply, p. 13. 


RELIGION AND MATHEMATICS. 97 


himself not only admits, but, it seems, complains of." 
However, he has endeavored to clear his paradox by re- 
stating his views, — with what success we shall now see. 

Let us take Mr. Newman’s explication of his doc- 
trine, and see what it is worth. It will not make any 
difference: the whole ground is bog, and it does not 
matter in what particular spot he chooses that his 
argument shall sink and be suffocated. His words 
are: “ For the sake of any one who is really and hon- 
estly stupid as to my meaning, I will here reiterate, 
that, when I deny that history can be Religion or a 
part of Religion, I mean it exactly in the same sense 
in which we all say that history is not mathematics. 
‘ Newton wrote the Principia’; true: but to make that 
proposition a part of mathematics would be an egre- 
gious blunder as to the very nature of the science. A 
man might be quite as good a mathematician, though 
he had never heard of Newton’s name. In the above, 
change Newton and Principia into Moses and Penta- 
teuch, or David and Psalms, or Paul and Epistles, and 
change mathematics into religion, — and (I say) all re- 
mains true. J may be right or I may be wrong; but I 
speak most distinctly. Religion and mathematics alike 
come to us by historical transmission ; but where the 
sciences flourish we judge of them for ourselves, make 
them our own, become independent of our teachers, 
add to their wisdom, and bequeathe an improved store 


* Reply, p. 13. My assertions of his inconsistency are strangely enough 
adduced by our author as a proof that I knew he did not mean what the 
declaration that no external revelation can alter our d priori notions of 
the Deity made me suppose he did mean. “ Why, this writer,” he says, 
“perfectly knows the contrary. In this very discussion he argues against 
my doctrine of ‘ progress’ in religion.” Yes; but he should have said that 
I admit he has a doctrine of “progress,” only that it is incomprehensible 
in conjunction with his notions of the impossibility of all external revela- 
tion, — as I still think it. 


98 A DEFENCE OF *“*THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


to our successors; but these sciences have Never flour- 
ished, and cannot flourish, where received on authority. 
They come to us by external transmission, but are not 
believed because of that transmission; and no historical 
facts concerning that transmission are any part of the 
science at all. Mathematics is concerned with Rela- 
tions of Quantities, Religion with the normal Relations 
between Divine and Human Nature. That is all.” 

Now, first, I remark that, even if we were to suppose, 
for argument’s sake, the case of religion and mathe- 
matics (!) to be exactly parallel,— and that the former, 
like the latter, was purely dependent on demonstrative 
evidence, — still what could be more misleading than 
to say, in that case, what Mr. Newman did say of a rev- 
elation of God, —“ We know everything from within, 
nothing from without”; when, apart from the proposal 
from without addressed to latent, but not active capa- 
cities, the man who has mastered “ Newton and Euler 
and Descartes” might have been without a knowledge . 
of a single mathematical theorem; as, in fact, there are 
very few who do attain even the thousandth part of the 
possibilities of knowledge which are latent within them. 

But, in fact, few but Mr. Newman would have 
chosen to forget, what most men will find it impossi- 
ble not to remember, that the difference of the evidence 
on which we receive mathematical and religious truth 
respectively is vital. 

Religious truth is received, not on demonstrative, 
but on moral evidence, and therefore the notions of 
religion vary, not only in degree, but in kind, in differ- 
ent ages and nations, and in the same individuals at 
different times; and of that evidence — often of various 
kinds — authority, as usual, is an element that cannot 
be left out. Mr. Newman cannot find, I suppose, any 
one who knows at all that the three angles of a triangle 


RELIGION AND MATHEMATICS. 99 


are equal to two right angles, who has ever believed 
that they are not: nor any one who knows any half- 
dozen mathematical truths who differs about them. 
But let him tell me whether he does not think there 
have been men who believe there is no God at all? 
who believe in an idol? who believe in fifty? who 
think revenge a duty? who offer human sacrifices, 
and think they honor their gods by it? who burn 
widows on the funeral pile of their husbands, and 
think it highly proper? who kill their children? who 
expose their parents, and do with an unmurmuring 
conscience a thousand other things at war with what 
he deems moral and spiritual truths? Mathematics 
merely differ by the more and the less. He who does 
not get beyond the first book of Euclid believes nothing 
contrary to or inconsistent with the knowledge of him 
who has mastered Newton’s “ Principia.” Hence the 
extreme, the fantastical absurdity of this false parallel. 

If Mr. Newman says that the variety of judgment is 
the result of external authority, that admits that his 
criterion is false, since the external authority pals not, 
I presume, do the like in mathematics. 

If he says it is because man mistakes historical for 
moral truth (which again has no parallel in the mathe- 
matics), it does not matter; he does mistake them, and 
on external authority. 

Let us look at the matter in another light, and the 
preposterous character of the analogy will appear still 
more evident. In the closing pages of a little mathe- 
matical book published by Mr. Newman some years 
ago, there is a confession that he was mistaken in a 
demonstration that he flattered himself he had once 
given respecting the Theory of Parallels. It is no dis- 
grace to Mr. Newman to have failed in a matter which 
has ever been the crux mathematicorum ; but now let 


100 A DEFENCE OF “‘ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


us suppose that he and others had disputed just as 
much about a thousand other mathematical points; in 
short, just as they do about those of religion ;— that 
some thought that two intersecting right lines would 
meet again, and some the contrary ; — that some thought 
that the three angles of a triangle were equal to two 
right angles, and some to four;—some, that similar 
triangles were in the duplicate ratio of their homolo- 
gous sides, and some not;—some, that the diameters 
and circumferences of circles were commensurable, 
while some doubted. What then? would not the 
questions which now find place in religion immediately 
intrude into mathematics? Would not the authority 
of him who spoke enter as one of the elements of de- 
cision? Would not men then begin to ask, whether 
Professor De Morgan or Professor Newman was the 
most reliable source of mathematical truth ?— a ques- 
tion, I apprehend, which they would not, even as it is, 
be very long in deciding; for mathematics, too, have 
their metaphysics. 

Hobbes truly declared, that if mathematics had to 
do with the will and passions of men, they would dis- 
pute about them just as much as about anything else ; 
and assuredly the obstinate old fellow proved it; for 
he was engaged in a bitter contest, which lasted to his 
death, with one of the first mathematicians of his day, 
and died unconvinced of his own absurdities. 

Now, if it were affirmed that an omniscient intellect 
had decided questions that had been everlastingly de- 
bated, would it make no difference whether or not that 
“historical” fact were true or otherwise? Every one 
can see, I suppose, that this at once alters Mr. New- 
man’s strange parallel about Newton and Paul. Let 
us try his propositions, which he declares to be logi- 
cally equipollent, by just introducing a similar element 
into each pair. : 


RELIGION AND MATHEMATICS. 101 


“ Newton wrote the Principia ;— true: but to make 
that proposition a part of mathematics would be an 
egregious blunder as to the nature of the science”; nor 
would it make any difference, even if God secretly in- 
spired them; for we receive the theorems on their own 
evidence. 

“ Paul wrote the Epistles ;— true: but to make that 
proposition a part of religion would be an egregious 
blunder as to the nature of the science ”; nor would it 
make any differerice even if God inspired them, though 
men have been everlastingly disputing on the matters 
to which they relate! 

Is there no difference in the last case, even though 
God inspired Paul to write the Epistles? the conclu- 
sions being, not, like those of Newton, on matters 
which are seen by their own light, but such as men 
have perpetually differed about? 

The close of the paragraph is exquisite : —“ Mathe- 
matics is concerned with relations of quantities; re- 
ligion with the normal relations between divine and 
human nature. That is all’ All, indeed! and enough 
too. This is just the way in which Mr. Newman slurs 
over a difficulty with vague language. The moment 
we ask “ what are the relations of quantity,” all man- 
kind are agreed. No one supposes that two and two 
make five. But when we ask what are “the normal 
relations of divine and human nature,’ I suppose the 
hubbub that will arise, will distinctly show that the 
case is very different. Or are we to take Mr. New- 
man’s theory of the said normal relations as infallibly 
true? Mr. Newman’s demonstration in relation to the 
Theory of Parallels was unfortunate, but not half so 
unfortunate as his demonstration of the parallelism be- 
tween mathematics and religion. And yet this is the 


view which a man is very “stupid” if he does not 
16 


102 A DEFENCE OF “* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ . 


clearly comprehend! and which I am not stupid enough, 
it appears, not to comprehend, but only “ dishonestly ” 
affect to be “stupid”! 

The real parallels for Mr. Newman to select would 
have been the practical sciences, — ethics, politics, 
physical and historical science, —in a word, any that 
depend, as religion does, on moral evidence, and vary 
with it. But this would not have been convenient, be- 
cause it would have been seen at once that the analogy 
was false. . 

But the argument is palpably refuted by appeal to 
ract. “ Religion is historically transmitted to us,” 
argues Mr. Newman, “but we do not receive it because 
it is historically transmitted to us.” Mr. Newman 
takes it for granted that the historical transmission of 
religious truth, its external presentation to the mind, 
merely presents it with the materials of forming a 
judgment, and that the moral and spiritual faculties 
will effectually make the separation. We see, in fact, 
they do not ; and Mr. Newman’s statement, — however 
true it may be for aught I know with respect to him, 
that he does not receive religious truth because histori- 
cally transmitted,— yet is palpably false in relation 
to the mass of mankind. Men of all religions say, we 
believe and practise this and that because it has been 
historically transmitted to us. Mr. Newman may say, 
this is no part, and can be no part, of true religion; but 
that is the very question. If the facts, “though his- 
torical,’ are given by God, the belief of them may be 
a part of religion; and that men think so in fact is 
seen in their universal subjection to an historical re- 
ligion. If Mr. Newman says that “ will not be where 
the sciences flourish,” then religious science in that 
sense has never flourished, nor is very likely to flourish, 


if we may judge by experience. 


A PRIORI REASONING AND EXPERIMENTAL TESTS. 103 


SECTION VIII. 


SHOWING THAT FACTS ARE AS INTRACTABLE TO THE A 
PRIORI SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHER AS TO EVERY OTHER 
A PRIORI PHILOSOPHER. 


In short, these favorite dicta of Mr. Newman’s, — that 
“an authoritative moral and spiritual revelation is im- 
possible ; that it cannot alter our a priori notions of the 
Divine character; that man is capable of universally 
‘criticizing the contents’ of every presumed external 
revelation ; and that not even a miracle can authorize 
any departure from some presumed ‘fixed moral basis’ 
‘yeconcilable with the heart-morality, and common 
conscience of human nature,’ —these dicta, I say, 
taken how you will, if supposed absolutely true, im- 
mediately involve us in manifold absurdities. Admit 
that man has a moral nature and moral capacities (as 
I for one fully admit), but capable of being warped in 
all sorts of ways from the true and the right, and need- 
ing apt instruments of education and culture; still 
more, admit that those capacities are originally cor- 
rupt; and then there is no difficulty about the matter ; 
the various facts are harmonized: but in that case any 
one can see that there is ample scope for an external 
authoritative revelation. Otherwise, there is immense 
difficulty. 

Let us assume, for example, the dogma about the 
“q@ priort notions of the ‘Deity, which no revelation, it 
seems, can alter”; and I ask, “ Are they the same in 
all men, or only insome men?” In all men, I suppose 


104 A DEFENCE OF ‘‘ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


it must be said, for we are inquiring about what is a 
characteristic of Man, not the idiosyncratic felicity of 
this or that man. “ Well, then, I should say, are these 
‘a priori notions, which nothing can alter, the same 
as their subsequent notions?” What a simpleton you 
must be to ask the question, would be the reply. Do 
you not see that men believe in gods of all sorts and 
sizes? In one,—in fifty,—in none? Do they not 
offer to them all sorts of sacrifices, — even including 
human? “Of course,” I should say; “ something then 
must have altered the invariable a priori into the vari- 
able a posteriori notions.’ ‘To be sure, must be the 
answer; historical religions, false miracles, pretended 
revelations, — anything can do it, —a thousand things 
have done it. “It appears then,” I think I should say, 
—“it appears then, my friend, that these @ priori 
notions, which nothing it seems can alter, anything 
can, except an authoritative revelation from God: it 
seems that though a true revelation is impotent, any 
false one is omnipotent! You are very complimentary - 
both to human nature and the Deity.” 

Take, again, the “ principles of moral judgment” in 
man (notin some Mr. Newman, but in man), which 
are supposed to be such as to authorize and capacitate 
him to pronounce on anything and everything in a pre- 
sumed revelation. Is it meant that these principles 
exist in all men, or only in some? In all, it will be 
said, of course; for we are talking still about what is 
characteristic of humanity, not the peculiar privilege of 
some critico-moral Pope; and indeed who would con- 
sent to abide by such a decision, which itself would 
affirm the external authority, which the theory itself 
denies? Do all exercise then these critical faculties ? 
and if those faculties do not “supersede,” as Mr. 
Newman admits, external instruction, do they eliminate 


A PRIORI REASONING AND EXPERIMENTAL TESTS. 105 


successfully the true only, and instinctively reject the 
false? How can you ask the question? will be again 
answered, All the facts in the world’s history pro- 
claim the contrary. Are not the vast majority of men 
at this moment — have they not been in all ages —bow- 
ing down to stocks and stones; worshipping all sorts 
of false deities, and honoring them with rites well 
worthy of them? Has there not been among vast 
communities, for unknown ages, the easiest reception 
of the most hideous superstition, the most unshrinking, 
unquestioning perpetration of the most horrible cruel- 
ties and pollutions, in obedience to even the falsest pre- 
tensions of priestcraft? Is it not the rarest thing to 
find men evincing any capacity for criticizing the re- 
ligious and moral systems by which their faculties 
have been swathed and bound from’ infancy? It is 
plain they do not.— It must be admitted, the objector 
will say. But then, is it because they would if they 
could, but cannot; or could if they would, but will 
not? If the former, or in the degree in which it may 
be true, they are to be pitied and excused; and it was 
in such pity that Christianity professed to come to 
their rescue; indeed, the supposition affords ample 
scope forthe offices of that external revelation which is 
so derided. If the latter, and men might universally 
and promptly exercise these faculties, but will not, O 
what a blessed theory is this! “ Truly,” as Harrington 
says, “I think it makes man the most detestable beast 
that ever crawled*under the cope of heaven.” It is no 
longer, I grant, of much consequence to discuss the 
‘moral and spiritual” prerogatives of such a creature. 
In Ais regeneration he will want an authoritative reve- 
lation, and miracles too, with a witness. 

If it be said, “ Well, practically, all men have not 
their powers of moral and spiritual criticism sufliciently 

16 * 


106 A DEFENCE OF “‘ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


active to eliminate what is false in the systems pre- 
sented to them from their childhood, but (as the prod- 
uce of the silkworm is dyed by the food it lives on) 
their religious system will be morally and spiritually 
what that of their immediate parents has been”; then 
this is to admit that, practically, in the vast majority of 
cases, their moral and spiritual faculties are put hors 
de combat. 

If it be further said: “ Nay, but from time to time 
individuals will arise in the course of ‘ progress,’ who 
will indefinitely improve the moral and religious sys- 
tems of man, and extricate the world from its errors, — 
men like Mr. Newman, for example” ;— then this is 
to admit the incompetence of the spiritual and moral 
faculties of man in general, and at the same time the 
possibility and utility of what is so stoutly denied, — 
an external divine revelation; unless it be pretended 
that, though man can perform this task, God cannot, 
‘which needs, I suppose, no refutation; or that though 
God can, man can do it better, which, I think, requires 
as little; or lastly, that man can, and God has not 
performed it, and will not,— which requires proof. 
Whether any such revelation has been given depends 
of course on the appropriate evidence; but that it 
could be given, and with singular advantage, the pre- 
ceding reasoning shows clearly enough. 

Take, again, “the fixed basis of morality,’ “the 
common conscience and heart-morality ”; is it, as be- 
fore, an absolutely invariable standard, or a variable 
one that is spoken of? or is it a measure of India-rub- 
ber that will hold three bushels or one? Whose “ fixed 
moral basis”? ‘That of the New-Zealander, or of a 
Hottentot, or of an ancient Greek, a Roman, a Jew, or 
of a Hindoo, or of a Chinese, or of an Englishman ? 
For all these have had very discordant notions on 


A PRIORI REASONING AND EXPERIMENTAL TESTS. 107 


many points of morals, and therefore (as well as for 
other reasons) about God. Or is everybody in general 
meant, and nobody in particular? ‘Will Mr. Newman 
allow that the moral judgment of the generality of his 
countrymen will determine what they ought or ought 
not to believe, (say) respecting the moral character of 
the Deity as determined by their “ fixed moral basis” : 
and in spite of the depressing effects of the “ Bible 
standard” on conscience, I do not think he will find, 
on the whole, any community more enlightened. Well, 
if so, the great bulk of them have had no difficulty in 
believing that God’s command to Abraham, to sacri- 
fice his son as a test of faith, (which Mr. Newman 
compares to a sacrifice to Moloch,) was not incompat- 
ible with what God might rightfully do. Will Mr. 
Newman say these are to be set aside as incapable of 
judging? What sort of test is this which appeals to 
the constitution of human nature, and first sets the 
bulk aside, and then the most enlightened of them ? 
Will he say that he will take the spiritual élites of the 
race, the most devout of them? Still the same thing 
is evident ; they do not see the incompatibility with the 
Divine holiness which makes him so indignant. ‘The 
ancient Jews, and modern Christians, — those of them 
whom our critic himself admits to have given the world 
the best examples of spiritual religion, — men like Paul 
and James, who, one would imagine, were not deficient 
in moral sensibility, both praise, as the most herotc virtue, 
that conduct of Abraham which Mr. Newman would 
denounce as a crime worthy only of a worshipper of 
Moloch to commit, in obedience to a command which 
only a Deity like Moloch could give; a singular scru- 
pulosity, I should say, in Mr. Newman, if we reflect 
what strange things he does suppose his moral Deity 
to be capable of performing, as seen in a previous sec- 


108 A DEFENCE OF “ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.’ 


tion! However, I think it may be said, not only that 
Paul and James could see no moral discrepancy in the 
supposed command, but that multitudes of men now, 
fully the equals of Mr. Newman in moral culture, in 
spiritual worth, in mental power, have no difficulty in 
the world in subscribing to the three following propo- 
sitions: first, that they do not see and dare not say 
that morally it was impossible that the Divine Being 
could thus try the faith of his ancient servant; sec- 
ondly, that if it were not incompatible with his attri- 
butes, it was very possible for him to convey his will 
to Abraham in a way which could leave no doubt on 
the patriarch’s mind that the command was no illu- 
sion of the imagination; and thirdly, that in that case 
it would be Abraham’s duty implicitly to obey ;—the 
first principle of morals with such men being the im- 
plicit submission of a creature to the Creator, the abso- 
lute surrender of the finite to the Infinite, whose de- 
clared will is of itself all-sufficient authority. It is an 
element which Mr. Newman continually leaves out of 
the question, for he will not permit even God to com- 
mand him to do anything which does not square with 
his previously “fixed moral basis”; while other men 
would rather imagine in such a case that they had been 
a little mistaken in their “fixed moral basis”; a sup- 
position of no difficulty, considering how variable that 
“fixed” basis has been. ‘Though far from comparing 
myself, either for power of mind or moral excellence, 
with the ten thousand times ten thousand the excellent 
of the earth who have held the truth of the above three 
propositions, I acknowledge, without hesitation, that I 
devoutly believe in the absolute truth of all of them. 
Will Mr. Newman say, that all these “excellent of the 
earth” were mistaken, and that the true moral test is 
to be found elsewhere; and, in fact, is to be found 


A PRIORI REASONING AND EXPERIMENTAL TESTS. 109 


with him alone, or the few who think with him? [ 
thought we must come to that at last; that is, in the 
variety of moral judgments we find the insufficiency 
of the criterion, unless we will all accept the criterion 
of Mr. Newman and the few who think with him. 

Well, it may be said, this does not prove that he may 
not be right. I grant it; but it conclusively proves this, 
which was what I brought it forward for,—that the 
criterion in question, the moral test from the “common 
conscience and heart-morality of human nature” as to 
what we shall deem fitting in the Deity, breaks down 
with us, since the most cultivated and excellent of the 
earth utterly dissent from Mr. Newman’s own applica- 
tion of it. 

And here I may, by the way, observe, that, all con- 
travention of moral notion aside, Mr. Newman seems 
to assume that God can never issue any such com- 
mands as rest simply on authority. He says, speak- 
ing of what he calls “ blind external obedience,” “ God 
cannot speak thus to man”;* and blames Christ, as 
well as “unscrupulous churches,’ for so doing. A 
Christian, on the other hand, will feel no inconsistency 
in believing that God might issue commands, for some 
of which the reasons are well known, for others par- 
tially known, and, in some cases, not known at all; 
and that in the last case his law is just as stringent, 
_ if it be made known, as in the first; yes, if only given 
as a test of obedience to the creature he has made. 
Nor would Christians feel that they wanted abundant 
analogy for the faith they exercised. If they can lay 
commands on their children, and expect obedience 
when the children cannot understand their reasons, 
even if they were explained, and when the parents 


* Phases, 2d ed., pp. 88, 89. 


110 A DEFENCE OF *‘ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


will not always explain the reasons, even where they 
can be understood, is it impossible that the same may 
occur between the “ Father of our spirits,’ (in com- 
parison with whom we shrink to nothing,) and his off- 
spring? We all know very well how it would fare 
with any obstinate child of man if he were to refuse 
obedience, except where he could, a@ priori, see the rea- 
sons of parental authority. He would soon be favored, 
I suppose, with a demonstration, not @ priori, of the 
reasonableness of obedience, if not of authority. Will 
man claim an authority which he denies to God ? 

To resume. 

Take, again, the dogma that no miracle could au- 
thorize any act which would without such authority 
be deemed morally wrong. “I further inquired,” says 
Mr. Newman, “what sort of miracle I could conceive 
that would alter my opinion on a moral question?.... 
No outward impressions on the eye or ear can be so 
valid an assurance to me of God’s will as my inward 
judgment.” * TI will not here repeat the question, Is 
there the same “inward judgment” in all, and if not. 
whose is the moral test? But, Is the above the feeling 
of man in general? Is it true to the principles of our 
nature? Let us take again the practical test. Have 
not men in all countries and races, and of almost all 
religions, some of them practised, and nearly all of 
them approved, (Jews and Christians amongst them,) 
some acts because they believed them miraculously 
authorized by God, though they would have disap- 
proved them without such supposed authority? Yes, 
it will be said; but they were reports of miracles 
merely. Very Ss6at if mere reports are sufficient to 
do it, would not the miracles themselves be likely, a 


* Phases, p. 91. 


A PRIORI REASONING AND EXPERIMENTAL TESTS. 111 


fortiori, to be still more efficacious? And if false re- 
ports of false miracles can thus modify the moral con- 
ceptions of men, and shake the “fixed moral basis,” 
would true reports of true miracles be likely to be less 
efhcacious? Nay, let us hear Mr. Newman himself ; 
let us hear him confessing, that, after twenty years’ 
study, he has only just emancipated himself from the 
errors and burdens which had oppressed his “ critical 
faculties.” He says, “ As to moral criticism, my mind 
was practically prostrate before the Bible. By the 
end of this period I had persuaded myself that morality 
so changes with the commands of God, that we can 


seem a favorite maxim with Mr. Newman. But at all 
events, this does not look as if it would be very easy 
to establish the exact limits of the “ fixed moral basis,” 
— that curious variable constant ! 

And again: “ Moral criticism is precisely that which 
I was slowest to use against authoritative claims. To 
me the system broke down /irst precisely on that side 
which alone this author [of ‘The Eclipse’] counts de- 
fensible, — the external evidences.” + He is quite mis- 
taken, as I shall show in the next section, in attribut- 
ing to me the above sentiment; but his confession 
shows distinctly enough that mankind are not very 
likely to see that no miracle can in any way modify 
their convictions of the-moral quality of actions, sup- 
posing them enjoined by Divine authority. 

For many years it appears that he was all the while 
looking (as Socrates would say) for that which, by the 
hypothesis, he had in his hand. If he was twenty 
Se ol 5 Ee Re ar eee 

* Phases, pp. 40, 41. t Reply, p. 30, note 


112 ' A DEFENCE OF *‘ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


vears, it is likely that the generality of men will be 
forty ; for no sooner does he declare that he has the 
“fixed moral basis” in his hands, and assures them 
that they have it also in theirs, than they exclaim that 
they have it not, and distrust the criterion which he 
says he has in his! The world will make but slow 
“progress” at this rate. But, in point of fact, though 
man unquestionably has a moral nature, and there are 
actions which all mankind would call virtuous and 
vicious, that nature is so far from being invariably 
developed, that even a plausible pretence of divine 
authority miraculously enforced is too often sufficient 
to overbear it. Mr. Newman may, perhaps, say that 
this is a thing “he complains of; I reply, that I think it 
is often a thing to be Eariplainel of; but nothing can 
be more clear, than that this care ceed disregard of his 
criterion makes that criterion no criterion at all, and 
shows that, somehow or other, man cannot trust, and 
will not acknowledge, any such “ fixed moral basis” 
not even the voice of God himself can in any degree 
alter. Take the most cultivated and enlightened con- 
sciences, you still cannot get one in a million to affirm 
(as we have seen in the case of Abraham) that there 
are no actions ordinarily called unlawful that would 
be made lawful by the command of God authentically 
made known by miraculous intervention. ‘They shud- 
der at. the thought of affirming the contrary; and that 
for a reason which Mr. Newman entirely ignores, and 
denies utterly the force of, —namely, that the author- 
ity of God is itself, even if no reasons were given, and 
none were imaginable but his will, the sufficient and 
all-sufficient authority. 


NEW TESTAMENT MORALITY. 113 


aEGyL LON. ix. 


WHETHER THE CHRISTIAN THROWS AWAY HIS “ MORAL 
JUDGMENT” IN ACCEPTING THE NEW TESTAMENT. 


Anp now I suppose Mr. Newman will reiterate his 
charge against the Author of “'The Eclipse of Faith,” 
that I affirm that we “must throw away our moral 
judgment before we can get any religion at all”; and 
other trash like it. I answer, that the theory of the 
Christian does not at all require him to “ throw away 
his moral judgments,” only he must take care how he 
gets them, and what they are. His theory is perfectly 
consistent. He reasons thus: “I see that men have 
moral capacities, but I see also with my own eyes, and 
other men see it too, that those capacities, as they are 
variously developed, lead to the most various and erro- 
neous “moral judgments,” and consequently also to the 
most various and erroneous conceptions of the Deity. 
They are in every man, as is the instrument that has 
developed them, varying between the wide limits of a 
“ Hottentot anda St. Paul.” That which has devel- 
oped mine has awakened within me an intense con- 
sciousness of its surpassing excellence and exquisite 
adaptation to humanity; it is in that mirror that my 
moral nature was first adequately revealed to myself; 
so that, comparing the New Testament with all other 
ethical systems, I am satisfied (in addition to other 
sources of evidence) that it never came from unaided 
man, and least of all from such unaided men as those 


to whom I must trace it. So far, therefore, from dis- 
17 


114 A DEFENCE OF “* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


carding my moral judgments, they are one of the very 
elements of evidence— though far from the only ele- 
ment — that Christianity came from God.” 

Mr. Newman asks the Author of “The Eclipse” to 
answer a question which he fancies invincible, but 
which is in fact quite easy. He asks, “ How I could 
confute Hindooism,”* or “any authoritative system of 
iniquity whatsoever?” + I answer, “ Because it lacks 
both the elements of the evidence, to he sure, which the 
Bible possesses, — the elevated morality and holy doc- 
trine, and the historic credibility of having come from 
God.” Give me a Hindooism, or any other ism which 
appeals in equal degree to the different sources of 
evidence which converge on Christianity, — an equally 
admirable morality and an equal historic credibility, — 
and I will believe that too. 

If our critic says, Nay, but he has proved even the 
New Testament morality defective, and he knows it ; 
men smile and say he is mistaken, and they know 
that. If he says that they are all wrong, and he alone 


is right, they reply, If so, so much the more does it 


prove the fallacy of his assertion, that men possess the 
faculty of moral discernment, which enables them to 
pronounce on the claims of every presumed. revelation 
from God; if he says that they are convinced that he 
is right after all, but only they are all “ dishonest,” 
Lam afraid that would prove that they were still worse 
off than if they were destitute of the “ free critical fac- 
ulty ” of moral judgment altogether. | 
As to his proving the New Testament “ morality de- 
fective,” they tell him they do not admit it; that where 
it would be so, if his criticism were true, they do not 
admit his criticism; but, on the contrary, affirm that it 


* Reply, p. 28. + Ibid. p. 31. 


a 


NEW TESTAMENT MORALITY. 115 


is erroneous and prejudiced ;— for example, when he tells 
us that the “moral teaching of the New Testament in 
relation to Patriotism, Marriage, Slavery, and so on, is 
essentially defective,” and that Christ taught the “ ab- 
rupt renunciation” of wealth to all his disciples. As 
to the Old Testament, they acknowledge, without ad- 
mitting many of his equally hasty criticisms, that its 
morality was not perfect, the New Testament being 
avowedly an amendment upon it; though they main- 
tain, and with justice, that it is unspeakably superior 
to the systems of heathen moralists. They admit that 
some things were permitted, not as the very best, but 
because men were imperfectly educated. to moral light; 
and that, though this may be of small account in the 
estimate of some speculators, who seem to doubt the 
very possibility of the morality of one age differing by 
a hair’s breadth from that of another, it is unhappily a 
circumstance which must be taken into account, as our 
race happens to be subjected to the conditions of an 
- historic development, where continuity of change is the 
law of “progress”; and it might surely be pardoned 
‘by one who finds even in the “ old barbarism,” and 
“the flexible Egyptian idolatry,” the “law of progress 
in God’s moral universe”! Lastly, as to the alleged 
immoralities which he says the Bible attributes to God 
himself, the Christian replies, that, though he believes, 
quite as much as Mr. Newman, that the Infinite One 
has moral qualities analogous to our own, yet that it 
is precisely here that he doubts whether he can pro- 
nounce the acts ascribed to the Deity in Scripture im- 
moral, inasmuch as he finds precisely analogous acts 
involved in His administration of the universe ; — 
which, as far as this point goes, brings us back to the 
old dilemma, which my critic is once more invited to 
consider and solve. 


116 A DEFENCE OF THE ‘*‘ ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


SECTION X. 


WHETHER IT BE FAIR IN CHRISTIANS TO MEET “ OBJEC- 
TIONS” BY “ OBJECTIONS.” 


™ 


Mr. Newman is pleased to say, in the conclusion of 
his Reply, that the attempt to meet the “ objections” 
against Christianity by retorting them, and showing 
that the “ diversities” of the objectors lay them open 
to objections, is “ dishonest.” He forgets one element, 
—the magnitude and nature of the diversities. It is 
difficult to say anything in opposition to this reprover 
of “personal antagonisms ” without being denounced 
as dishonest. However, as usual, let me look at his 
argument, and trouble not myself at all about his im- 
putations. 

He says, that it is “an impotent and dishonest de- 
fence of Christian authoritative pretensions to taunt 
the assailants with diversities in their positive creed” ; 
and compares it to the attempt of the Romanist to 
deal similarly with Protestants. I answer, first, that 1 
think it would be a very fair topic of argument with 
the Romanist, if he could prove not only “ diversities” 
among Protestants, but, as in the present case, greater 
objections to their tenets than could be advanced 
against his own. | 

But, secondly, to come a little closer, I proceed to 
ask, with all submission, whether Mr. Newman really 
thinks the religion for which he pleads, as exhibiting 
the true theory of man’s relations towards God, and 
God’s aspect towards him,—the claims on the one 


OBJECTIONS VERSUS OBJECTIONS. 117 


side, the duties on the other, — is authoritative or not? 
If he says, “ Yes,” then I presume the argument from 
objections becomes, even on his own showing, as per- 
fectly legitimate on the one side as the other; if he 
says, “ No” (as, perhaps, considering the apologetic 
tone in which he speaks of “serious Atheists,” who, 
though they do not believe “in a personal God at all,” 
yet believe the “more fundamental truth of a fixed 
moral basis” ; and his equally apologetic tone in speak- 
ing of idolatry, a crime which his definition so nearly 
annihilates), —if, I say, Mr. Newman says, that, though 
he believes his system is the true one, it is not authori- 
tative, — and that it really matters very little whether a 
man isa “serious Atheist,’ a sincere Buddhist, or a 
Fetichist, — then, undoubtedly, it is hardly worth while 
to consider whether the objections against Christianity 
can be retorted with interest against such atheory ; 
and for this simple reason, that it cannot, on such a 
theory, matter one doit whether a man be a Christian 
or not. Certainly, take it at the worst, he may as well 
remain as he is, wnless it be contended that, though a 
man may be anything else, it is at his peril that he re- 
mains a Christian; or that, though he may be a votary 
of any religion which does not claim to be authorita- 
tive, woe be to him if he professes one that does! 

But I should be disposed to show the futility of this 
argument on yet another ground. I contend that the 
argument from objections may be, and often is, perfectly 
valid. I believe It is so in the controversy between 
Deism and Christianity. He who is persuaded of the 
truth of any system, even though he cannot answer all 
the objections against it, may most legitimately con- 
sider whether or not there are not equal or greater ob- 
jections against the systems it is proposed he should 


adopt in its stead; and if he finds that there are 
Ae 


118 A DEFENCE OF ‘*‘ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


greater, it may be quite sufficient to justify him in re- 
solving that at least he will have nothing to do with 
_them. Aman may not see that his house is perfectly 
convenient; he may fancy at times that certain modi- 
fications would improve it, and perhaps be mistaken in 
that fancy; but as to changing it,— it is quite suf- 
ficient to decide him against that, if he be offered 
nothing better than a dark cellar under ground ora 
balloon in the air. The former is the choice residence 
to which Atheism or Pantheism dooms him, and the 
other the mansion provided by the tumid but unstable 
systems of our modern spiritualists. 

Mr. Newman says, that I have endeavored to “ break 
his and Mr. Parker’s heads” against one another. I ~ 
should not presume; and it is quite unnecessary, for 
they have “broken their own heads together” with 
sufficient violence. In virtue of their spiritual appar- 
atus, they have arrivéd, as usual, at very different con- 
clusions on most momentous points; and though it is 
not of the smallest consequence as long as they are 
merely attempting to destroy historical Christianity, 
yet the moment people ask, “ And what are we to be- 
lieve ?”’ it becomes of vital importance. 


CRITICISM ON ** THE PERFECTION OF CHRIST.” 119 


ewe rrON XY. 


MR. NEWMAN’S CHAPTER ON “ THE MORAL PERFECTION 
OF CHRIST.” 


Mr. Newman founds another.charge of “ very gross 
garbling” on my strictures upon his too celebrated 
comparison of Fletcher of Madeley with Jesus Christ. 
Fellowes represents Mr. Newman as having read the 
“Life of Fletcher” when a boy, and as having then 
thought him a more perfect man than Jesus Christ ; 
and as having said in the “ Phases,” that, if he were to 
read the book again, he should most probably still be 
of that opinion. Mr. Newman’s exact words in the 
“ Phases” are these: “ Heroes are described in super- 
human dignity, why not in superhuman goodness? 
Many biographies overdraw the virtue of their subject. 
An experienced critic can sometimes discern this; but 
certainly the uncritical cannot always. I remember, 
when a boy, to have read the ‘Life of Fletcher of 
Madeley, written by Benson; and he appeared to me 
an absolutely perfect man; and, at this day, if I were 
to read the book afresh, I suspect I should think his 
character a more perfect one than that of Jesus.” * 

Now, Mr. Newman says, that when he read the 
“ Life of Fletcher,” as a boy, he made no formal com- 
parison with Jesus Christ. I thought, indeed, that the 
three last lines of the extract implied the contrary ; but 
I see that that was an inadvertence of mine; he merely 


* Phases, p. 184. 


120 A DEFENCE OF THE ‘“‘ ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


thought at that time that Fletcher was an absolutely 
perfect man. Still, that my mistake was neither 
“stealthy misrepresentation” nor “gross garbling” 
appears plainly from this, that the proposed correction 
makes nothing to the argument, but rather renders 
the absurdity somewhat more flagrant. I charitably 
supposed him, as a child, to have first made the com- 
parison (which was certainly childish enough), and 
then afterwards, without verifying his early impressions 
by a reperusal of Fletcher’s Life, to have proceeded to . 
presume its accuracy on the strength of his early im- 
pressions. ‘T’his would have been strange enough; 
but it now appears that the comparison itself was not 
the reflex of a childish fancy, hastily adopted, but 
the mellow fruit of maturer years; that, as a boy, he 
thought Fletcher an absolutely perfect man, and that 
though at a later period he did not think so, yet that, 
without staying to see, by a reperusal of the Life, how 
far Fletcher fell short of that ideal, he presumes so far 
to trust his impressions as to say that, if he did repe- 
ruse the book, he should give to Fletcher the palm over 
Jesus Christ! If this will help Mr. Newman, he is very 
welcome to it, and I accept his emendation with all 
thanks. “ When I was a child,” says the Apostle, “ I 
spake as a child, I thought as a child, I understood as 
a child; but when I became a man, I put away child- 
ish things.” How far the readers of Mr. Newman will 
think he did so, I leave them to judge. 

I had said, “ Christianity is willing to consider the 
arguments of men, but not the impressions of boys.” 
On this Mr. Newman remarks, “ No one can possibly 
read this without understanding that I recommended 
my boyish impressions as something trustworthy, some- 
thing for which I claimed respect from Christianity.” * 


* Reply, p. 15. 


CRITICISM ON ‘** THE PERFECTION OF CHRIST.”’ 121 


I answer, that the words were intended to convey pre- 
cisely what they do convey, —that the unverified im- 
pressions of boyhood had been made the basis of a 
most offensive attack on the character of Christ, and 
that to such impressions Christianity can hardly be 
expected to pay much attention. 

Mr. Newman, in reprinting the notable paragraph, 
incloses the three last lines in brackets, and says that 
he now sees that these would have been “better omit- 
ted,” as they seem to have “ distracted the mind from 
his argument.” * Perhaps now he does see; but they 
were not omitted. They gave, and could not but give, 
substantially, the impression of his sentiments which 
not only I, but I believe every other reader of the book, 
entertained; and that these impressions were essen- 
tially correct, his most offensive chapter on “ The Moral 
Perfection of Christ,’ whom “in consistency of good- 
ness” he places “far below vast numbers of his un- 
honored disciples,” proves ad nauseam. ' 

As to the bracketed lines distracting my mind from 
his “ argument,” as he calls it, and from the occasion 
on which he gave expression to his sentiments in the 
« Phases,” I answer, that I had nothing in the world to 
do with either. It was with the fact merely that I 
had then to do;—that a person had avowed the pre- 
posterous sentiments in question. The Author of “ The 
Eclipse” and Mr. Fellowes were discussing the “ Evi- 
dences of Christianity,” among which it is mentioned 
that the entire character of Christ, but especially as the 
Moral Ideal of Humanity, was not likely to have been 
of human origination, least of all among those to whom 
history restricts the problem. Mr. Fellowes replies, 
“that it is not so clear to everybody that Jesus Christ 


ee ee SS 


* Reply, p. 17. 


122 A DEFENCE OF “* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


ts a perfect ideal of humanity,” and instances Mr. 


Newman. This fact is sufficiently substantiated in _ 


the above paragraph ; and it was with that fact alone 
Thad to do. That Iwas bound to follow Mr. New- 
man into all the circumstances under which he had 
formed or might advance his singularities of opinion, I 
deny: it is enough to have to do with the singularities 
themselves. A man, I suppose, might refer to Baxter’s 
well-known belief in witches, or some modern’s crotchet 
about table-turning or spirit-rapping, without entering 
into the question as to how he came by it, or the occa- 
sions on which he advanced it. Mr. Newman’s notion 
seems to have sprung from the fallacious idea, already 
referred to in the Introduction, that “The Eclipse of 
Faith,’ instead of being an examination of certain 
prominent opinions of himself and others, was designed 
to follow “The Soul,” or the “ Phases,” or both, step 
by step. I hope I have some better employment than 
to track all the tortuosities of his too eccentric logic. 

Whether, in the present instance, he has made out 
his case of “very gross garbling,” I now leave to the 
calm decision of the reader. 

Mr. Newman is pleased to say, as if the occasion on 
which he gave utterance to the sentiment in question 
must come into consideration, “that I have here intruded 
into a controversy with which I have no concern.” I 
think it plain, by his own confession, that I have not in- 
truded into it, as in truth I had no concern with it; I 
was only concerned with the sentiment itself. His very 
complaint is, that I have not referred to the controversy 
in connection with which the offensive passage occurs. 

As to the charge of “ intruding,” I beg to say, that, 
when a man gives utterance to such sentiments re- 
specting Christ, no matter m what connection, it is 
quite sufficient warrant for the disciples of the Master 


CRITICISM ON ** THE PERFECTION OF CHRIST.” 123 


they revere and love to “intrude” into the controversy ; 
and for myself, I beg to say very distinctly, I shall in- 
trude into this or any other public controversy on 
which I may humbly hope to say anything to the pur- 
pose, without asking Mr. Newman’s leave, or anybody 
else’s, for so doing. For this reason, I shall now “in- 
trude” a little more into this controversy, by making 
some remarks on Mr. Newman’s new chapter on “ 'The 
Moral Perfection of Christ.” 

Mr. Newman seems to think his repulsive state- 
ments may be, in some respects, made less so, if it 
be borne in mind that they are especially founded on 
the views of the Rev. James Martineau. I am quite 
willing to give him the benefit of any such fact. ‘The 
dubiety of that eloquent gentleman as to how much 
historic worth there may be in the evangelical narra- 
tives, and the latitude of his canons of historical criti- 
cism, — which, if we mistake not, have fairly made his 
co-religionists stand aghast, —do no doubt render it 
very precarious to defend Christ’s moral perfection as 
a fact, — whatever it may be as a myth, — or, in short, 
to prove his very existence. His system may well be 
called what Mr. Newman terms it, — “a reconstruction 
of Christianity,” of which Mr. Martineau supposes we 
have the singular felicity of knowing more than the 
Apostles themselves!) Mr. Newman remarks : — 

“T have to give reasons why I cannot adopt that 
modified scheme of Christianity which is defended and 
adorned by James Martineau; according to which it is 
maintained, that, though the Giasetel narratives are not 
to be trusted in detail, there can be yet no reasonable 
doubt what Jesus was; for this is elicited by a ‘ higher 
moral criticism, which (it is remarked) I neglect. In 
this theory, Jesus is avowed to be a man born like 
other men; to be liable to error, and (at least in some 


124 A DEFENCE OF *‘ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


important respects) mistaken. Perhaps no general 
proposition is to be accepted merely on the word of 
Jesus; in particular, he misinterpreted the Hebrew | 
prophecies. ‘He was not less than the Hebrew Mes- 
siah, but more.’ No moral charge is established against 
him, until it is shown that, in applying the old prophe- 
cies to himself, he was conscious that they did not fit. 
His error was one of mere fallibility in matters of intel- 
lectual and literary estimate. On the other hand, Jesus 
had an infallible moral perception, which reveals itself 
to the true-hearted reader, and is testified by the com- 
mon consciousness of Christendom. It has pleased 
the Creator to give us one sun in the heavens, and one 
Divine soul in history, in order to correct the aberra- 
tions of our individuality, and unite all mankind into 
one family of God. Jesus is presumed to be perfect 
until he is shown to be imperfect. Faith in Jesus, is 
not reception of propositions, but reverence for a per- 
son; yet this is not the condition of salvation or essen- 
tial to the Divine favor. Such is the scheme, abridged 
from the ample discussion of my eloquent friend.” * 
And now what answer does any Christian make to 
this plea of Mr. Newman, that he is opposing Mr. 
Martineau? Why, in the first place, just this: that 
whatever Mr. Martineau’s opinions may be,— that 
supposing Jesus Christ to have been only a man, — not 
even a great man, but only an ordinary man, who, 
nevertheless, had enjoyed some litile reputation of 
being a good man,— Mr. Martineau, and the Unitari- 
ans, and the Trinitarians, and all the world, have just 
reason to complain of Mr. Newman’s contempt of all 
the commonest maxims of historic criticism in judging 
him. He does not treat Jesus Christ even with the 


* Phases, pp. 140, 141. 


CRITICISM ON *‘ THE PERFECTION OF CHRIST.”’ 125 


justice and candor due to the most common historic 
personage. He puts impressions for facts, fancies for 
arguments ; speaks when the documents are silent, 
silences them where they speak; imagines evidence 
where he pleases, and ignores it where he pleases ;— 
and all for the delightful purpose of proving Christ 
morally imperfect! And now for an example or two. 
Take his account of Christ’s answer to the Pharisees 
who came to entrap him by their question respecting 
the tribute-money, and whose insidious villany he 
baffles by saying, “ Render unto Cesar the things that 
are Ceesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” 
On this answer, (though not one syllable is added by 
Christ himself, nor by the historians who record it, that 
can for a moment countenance the fancy,) Mr. New- 
man ventures to say that he cannot but think our 
Lord “shows a vain conceit in the cleverness of his 
answers” ;* and adds, that he cannot regard his “ error” 
as a merely intellectual “error,” since “blundering 
self-sufficiency is a moral weakness.’ What can for 
a moment justify this most gratuitous imputation of 
“vain conceit” and “blundering self-sufficiency,” f 
where there is not one syllable on the face of the history 
—not the faintest shade of expression —to justify it? 
Mr. Newman may perhaps say, as he elsewhere says in 
reference to other points,t that he is only giving his 
impressions, —“‘a statement of fact concerning his own 


* Phases, p. 152. See the entire passages in the chapter on “ The 
Moral Perfection of Christ.” 

+ Some of the words so liberally bestowed on our Lord in this chapter 
will inevitably suggest to every reader an application of which the writer 
was little conscious. A man may shoot his arrow with exact perpendicu- 
larity over his own head. It smites the invisible and impassive air, and 
does no harm to that; but the missile descending, according to the law of 
gravity, with the exact force with which it has been projected, may smite 
full sore the unhappy archer himself. 

¢ Reply, p. 1. ; 

18 


126 A DEFENCE OF *“* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.’ 


mind, and that is all. Valeat quantum!” Whereupon 
the reader will say, of course, Who cares for a million 
of his impressions, without evidence for them? and to 
that question I, for one, should not know what answer 
to give. This sort of criticism is not to do justice to 
Christ, even if he were nothing but an ordinary char- 
acter of history ; for it is to fancy evidence, not to pro- 
duce it or sift it. 

Nothing, again, can exceed the eccentric criticismr 
with which Mr. Newman introduces these strictures. 
He says, that to “imagine that because a coin bears 
Ceesar’s head, therefore it is Ceesar’s property, and that 
he may demand to have as many of such coins as he 
chooses paid over to him, is puerile and notoriously 
false. The circulation of foreign coin of every kind 
was as common in the Mediterranean then as now, 
and everybody knew that the coin was the property of 
the holder, not of him whose head it bore. Thus, the 
reply of Jesus, which pretended to be a moral decision, 
_was unsound and absurd; yet it is uttered in a tone of 
dictatorial wisdom, and ushered in by a graye rebuke, 
‘ Why tempt ye me, hypocrites?’ ” * 

The meaning here imputed to our Lord’s words is 
“ nuerile” enough, but the puerility is in Mr. New- 
man’s criticism, not in Christ’s answer. How far- 
fetched is this gloss, (yet needful to make Christ’s de- 
cision “wnsound,’) compared with the obvious inter- 
pretation generally put on his words: “ Since you thus 
recognize, in fact, Cesar’s political authority by receiv- 
ing the current coin which bears his image, render to 
him the political allegiance which you thereby ac- 
knowledge; and ‘to God the things that are God’s.’” 
This Mr. Newman calls evading the question; he has 
heard “the interpretation,” he says, “from high 'Trini- 


* Phases, p. 152. 


CRITICISM ON *“* THE PERFECTION OF CHRIST.” 127 


tarians, which indicates to him how dead is their moral 
sense in everything which concerns the conduct of 
Jesus.” Polite words! But Mr. Martineau tells him 
that Unitarians are involved in the same condemna- 
. tion! What modest confidence there must be in a 
criticism which will not only have Christ in the wrong, 
but, to make it out, is ready to affirm that the moral 
sense of almost all Christians must be half dead into 
the bargain! This, surely, is not to weigh evidence, 
but to assume one’s self infallible in the matter, though 

to do so would imply that not only Christ, but nearly 
~ everybody else, was not merely fallible, but grossly de- 
fective in moral sensibility! The whole passage (that 
Mr. Newman may not accuse me of not quoting 
enough) the reader will find in my Appendix, * 
where he will see with what complacency our critic 
proposes for Christ a better answer than Christ gave ; as 
well as with what humanity he apologizes for the in- 
nocent Pharisees, by asking, Was it not their “ duty” 
thus to prove, by their questions, the wisdom of one 
who professed to be an “authoritative teacher”? 
Here, again, we see fancy at work, and the history 
ignored ; if the history was to be supposed faithful at 
all, why should it be assumed that the answer of 
Christ is,correctly given, — it assuredly is not correctly 
interpreted, — while the account of the Pharisees is 
quite a mistake? The only answer one can conceive 
is, that if Christ must be proved in the wrong, then the 
Pharisees must be presumed in the right. The critic 
can imagine conceit in Christ when the history is 
wholly silent; he silences the history when it speaks 
against the Pharisees. He imagines they came, simple, 
innocent souls, in pure good faith, to try the wisdom 
of Christ as a teacher sent from God! 


* See chapter on Moral Perfection, etc. 


128 A DEFENCE OF *“* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


Take another example of the injustice done to Christ 
by this style of criticism. After Christ on a certain 
occasion had been inculcating the duty of “watchful- 
“ness” by a striking parable, Peter asks, “ Lord, speak- 
est thou this parable to us or also unto all??? Mr. 
Newman says, “ Who would not have hoped an in- 
genuous reply, —‘ To you only, or ‘'To everybody’? 
Instead of which, so inveterate is his tendency~ to 
muffle up the simplest things in mystery, he replies, 
‘Who then is that faithful and wise steward, &c., &c., 
and entirely evades reply to the very natural question.” * 
The answer is, first, that the parable in which our » 
Lord “ evades reply ” is itself, to most understandings, 
a sufficient indication of the way in which our Lord in- 
tended the question should be answered, namely, that he 
did speak to all, and not to seme only; but, secondly, 
in the last verse of the thirteenth chapter of Mark, after 
the’ same or a similar parable, he gives that very cate- 
gorical decision demanded, “ And what I say unto you 
I say unto all, Watch.” This supplemental confirma- 
tion of one Gospel by words found in another is, as in 
so many other cases, a strong indication of the reality of 
the events and the fidelity of the narrative. The haste 
with which Mr. Newman pronounces his judgment on 
Christ’s “ tendency to muffle up the simplest things in 
mystery,” requires no comment. Withdut sufficiently 
examining facts, or ignoring them when it meets with 
them, “free criticism” has an easy task indeed. 

Take another example of the precarious criticism by 
which Mr. Newman does injustice to the character of 
our Lord, —still viewed as a mere man. He afhrms 
that Jesus Christ intended to proclaim absolutely and 
indiscriminately the first principles of communism, — 


* Phases, p. 155. 


CRITICISM ON ‘** THE PERFECTION OF CHRIST.”’ 129 


a total “and abrupt renunciation of wealth”; that 
what other men regard as general principles, which, 
like all other general principles, must be interpreted by 
the spirit, not by the letter, are to be pressed to the 
utmost rigor of literal interpretation, — which those of 
no moralist will bear ;—or even that what was Christ’s 
demand on his first personal emissaries, who were to 
go forth in the strength of their miraculous mission, 
“ without scrip or purse,” he designed should rule the 
conduct of all his disciples then and through all time! 
The answer to the “rich young man,” whose self- 
righteous conceit assured him that he had kept “ all 
the commandments from his youth up,” and whose de- 
mand _of a more rigid test was well met by a reply 
which disclosed to him his weak point, and showed 
that he was mistaken in supposing himself willing to 
pursue “eternal life” at all hazards, Mr. Newman 
thinks was the answer which Christ would have given 
to every inquiring disciple ; and that the maxim, “‘ Sell 
that ye have, and give alms,” Christ designed abso- 
lutely for every Christian and for ever!* Mr. New- 
man may say, perhaps, that he is right in his. criticism, 
and that the generality of the world are wrong; but 
even then, what man but Mr. Newman would proceed 
to assail the moral character, even of a mere man, on ° 
a criticism so precarious that not one out of ten thou- 
sand can see its force? And that they with good rea- 
son demur to it is plain enough; for, if this astounding 
principle were the corner-stone of Christ’s teaching (as 
it must have been, if a principle at all), how is it that 
Jesus Christ does not uniformly mention it on the 
many occasions on which he receives his disciples? 
how is it that, when Zaccheus declares he is going to 


* See chapter on Moral Perfection, etc. 
18 * 


130 A DEFENCE OF ** THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.’’ 


give “the half of his goods” in reparation of the wrongs 
inflicted by his rapacity, Jesus Christ does not tell him 
that that was not enough, and that he will not be 
let off without giving the whole? how is it that when 
“rulers” believed on him, how is it that in his inter- 
view with Nicodemus and others, he says nothing 
about this grand prerequisite of discipleship ? how is 
it that the “rich Joseph of Arimathea” was still rich 
at Christ’s death, and had not long before become a 
“ Christian socialist”? how is it, when advising the 
rich men rather to make choice as their guests of the 
“poor” than the “rich,” that he does not tell them 
that they have no business to have any choice~in the 
matter? that all thelr money was to be thrown into a 
common stock, and that “no man was to call any: 
thing his own”? how is it that he says, “ The poor ye 
have always with you,” when he ought rather to have 
said, “There is to be neither poor nor rich”? how is 
it, when he reproved Martha “ for being cumbered with 
much serving,” that he does not also reprove her for 
wasting the “joint stock”? Our critic may, perhaps, 
say: “O, all this is rubbish, —legend,—no part 
of the true history.’ Then how does he know that 
just the precept, “ Sell that ye have, and give alms,” is 
the only part that is true history? Why does he retain 
just so much as he thinks will make for his unenviable 
thesis, and ignore all that makes against it? Is this 
historic criticism ? 

But Mr. Newman imagines, as some others have 
done, that his theory derives support from the conduct 
of the Apostles and the disciples at Jerusalem, at and 
just after the day of Pentecost. The generality of 
commentators and critics (Neander among them) see 
in this nothing but a temporary provision. It seems to 
have been to meet the wants of the multitude of 


CRITICISM ON ** THE PERFECTION OF CHRIST.”’ 131 


“ strangers” (then brought from all parts to Jerusalem), 
just converted to the faith; for whom the resident 
Christians, in the ardor-of their Christian love, dis- 
solved for a time the connection of meum and tuum, and 
“had all things common.” That this is the common- 
sense view is seen by this, that nothing of the kind ap- 
pears in the “ New Testament” itself when the emer- 
gency had passed away. It is also to most minds 
conclusively proved to be the right view by Peter’s 
question to Ananias, — acknowledging his right to the 
estate he had sold, though he was a professed Chris- 
tian: “ Was it not in thy own power?” which it 
would not have been had the fundamental principle of 
Christianity demanded its surrender. 

But at all events, with such a mass of evidence 
against him, with the all but unanimous assertion of 
critics and commentators on the other side, who but 
this critic would feel sufficiently secure of his judg- 
ment to found upon it a charge of “moral unsound- 
ness” in the Founder of Christianity ? 

And lastly, looking still at Christ as a mere man, 
who but our critic —even if Christ had proclaimed the 
principle of the community of property — would have 
founded upon it grave inferences of moral imperfec- 
tion? I think the principle politically as pernicious 
and mistaken as Mr. Newman can do, and that far, far 
less than the human wisdom of Christ can see it to be 
so. But does it necessarily follow that men who have 
maintained any such mistaken principle are morally 
unsound? Would he deal out the same measure to 
all the philosophers who have maintained this or simi- 
lar false political notions? Would he so deal with 
Plato, who so zealously maintained this very dogma ? 

Again, still looking at Christ merely as a man, how 
shall we characterize the charges, the odious charges, 


132 A DEFENCE OF “THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


connected with the circumstances of his death, where 
not one syllable of the history justifies the interpreta- 
tion which Mr. Newman puts upon Christ’s character 
and actions? In order to give color to them at all, 
we must ignore all the history, and rewrite it; but 
then, if we thus cast aside all the history we have, 
what sort of historic criticism is it which decides against 
the character of Christ? If what is said for him be 
assumed false, what right have we to assume that what 
is not even said, but simply fancied, on behalf of his 
persecutors, is true? Not contented with his previous 
charges of “ vain conceit,” “ arrogance and error com- 
bined,” “fanatical and mischievous precepts,” and 
“mistakes which indicate moral unsoundness,” Mr. 
Newman further represents our Saviour as denouncing 
the atrocious wickedness of the rulers, not because the 
charges were true and the condemnation just, but as 
guiltily and of set purpose exasperating them to mur- 
der him in order that he might escape the difficulty of 
maintaining his claims to be the Messiah, which, it 
seems, he had long hoped he was (!), but of which he 
had recently had great misgivings, and now felt to be 
untenable! I defy any one to produce from all the 
literature of Europe a passage so luxuriant in ex- 
travagance as the following: —“'The time arrived at 
last when Jesus felt that he must publicly assert Mes- 
siahship; and this was ‘certain to bring things to an 
issue. I suppose him to have hoped that he was Mes- 
siah, until hope and the encouragement given him by 
Peter and others grew into a persuasion strong enough 
to act upon, but not always strong enough to still mis- 
givings. I say, I suppose this, but I build nothing 
on my supposition. I however see, that when he had 
resolved to claim Messiahship publicly, one of two 
results was inevitable, if that claim was ill-founded ; 


CRITICISM ON **‘ THE PERFECTION OF CHRIST.”’ 133 


namely, either he must have become an impostor in 
order to screen his weakness, or he must have retracted 
his pretensions amid much humiliation, and have re- 
tired into privacy to learn sober wisdom. From these 
alternatives there was escape only by death, and upon 
death Jesus purposely rushed.” * 

Here I do not stay to ask what are the grounds for 
the pleasant “ suppositions” above ; for our critic says 
he “ builds nothing on them”; and it is well, for noth- 
ing can stand on such mere quicksand. ‘T’o write thus 
is to indulge fancies, not to criticize history: but I 
ask, first, how does all this imputation of low and gross 
villany harmonize with the impressions drawn from the 
whole of the only accounts we have? and, secondly, if 
we reject those accounts, then, as before, what right 
have we to form even a conjecture to the prejudice of 
Christ? But the crowning absurdity of the whole is, 
the fine dilemma which Mr. Newman has constructed, 
and which, like most of his dilemmas, are dilemmas 
from which no one is in danger but himself. He says: 
“‘ One of two results was inevitable, if that claim was 
ill-founded; namely, either Christ must have become 
an impostor in order to screen his weakness, or he 
must have retracted his pretensions amid much humili- 
ation, and have retired into privacy to learn sober wis- 
dom.” 

Mr. Newman, perhaps, does not like to say that 
Christ was an impostor at the time he thus planned 
this curious suicide at the expense of other people’s 
euilt; and so he tells us, that, if i aad lived, he must 
have become an impostor, or retracted his claims to 
Messiahship ; therefore he resolved to die in order to 
escape the alternative! Did ever any man but Mr. 


* Chapter on Moral Perfection, etc. 


134 A DEFENCE OF ‘“‘ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”? 


Newman suppose that this was escaping the alterna- 
tive? Would not the mere fact of his dying to escape 
the alternative of becoming an impostor (if any man 
ever did, would, or could die for any such purpose) 
convict him of already being an impostor? Is it not 
very much as if we were told that a man committed 
suicide in order to escape the alternative of becoming a 
thief, which he felt that he must be if he did not turn 
an honest man? Would not the very act prove, if it 
proved anything but sheer idiocy, that the man was 
already in heart such a thief that he would sooner die 
than not be one ? 

However, such is the theory which Mr. Newman 
thinks is fairly extractible by “free criticism ” from the 
history, which, however, must be all set aside, and. a 
pure romance substituted in its place, to give the faint- 
est color to it. “Clearly,” (to use a favorite formula 
of Mr. Newman’s, but I hope with more reason,) if 
we thus throw aside the history, then we are simply 
reduced to silence. As before, we cannot reject all that 
makes for Christ, and substitute fancies that make 
against him. I deliberately say, that if we look at 

Christ as a mere man,—as one of whom we know 

-nothing but what the Evangelical narrative, restricted 
to the purely human element, discloses to us, — there 
is not aman who has any pretensions, I do not say 
to Christianity, but to candor or common sagacity, | 
who will ‘call this (I will not say probable, but even 
the flimsiest plausible) historical criticism; and that 
if there is one thing which, even rejecting all Christ’s 
supernatural claims, the narrative of his life rivets on 
the soul, it is that Jesus Christ was utterly incapable 
of the mingled atrocities-and absurdities here attrib- 
uted to him. 

Once more: let Jesus Christ only have been a great 


CRITICISM ON ** THE PERFECTION OF CHRIST.”? 135 


sage, will any one say that the criticism on the Para- 
bles — those wonderful compositions, which have fixed 
the admiration of all ages,— which condense more 
meaning into smaller compass than any of the apo- 
thegms of sages and philosophers,— wisdom clothed 
at the same time in the selectest, yet the simplest im- 
agery —is conceived in the spirit of common justice 
and candor? “Strip the Parables,” says Mr. Newman, 
“of the imagery, and you find that sometimes one 
thought. has been dished up four or five times, and 
generally, that an idea is dressed into sacred grandeur. 
This mystical method made a little wisdom go a great 
way with the multitude; and to such a mode of econ- 
omizing resources the instinct of the uneducated man 
betakes itself, when he is claiming to act a part for 
which he is imperfectly prepared.” * 

Of Christ’s parabolic style generally Mr. Newman 
speaks thus:—“ But not to be tedious, in general I 
must complain that Jesus purposely adopted an enig- 
matical and pretentious style of teaching, unintelligible 
to his hearers, and needing explanation in private..... 
Christian divines are used to tell us that this mode was 
peculiarly instructive to the vulgar of Judea; and they | 
insist on the great wisdom displayed in his choice of 
the lucid parabolical style. But in Matthew xiii. 10-15, 
Jesus is made confidentially to avow precisely the op- 
posite reason; namely, that he desires the vulgar.not to 
understand him, but only the select few to whom he 
gives private explanations. I confess I believe the 
Evangelist rather than the. modern divine.” + 

We here see Mr. Newman stumbling at the apparent 
paradox that parables were used clearly to convey the 


* Phases, p. 154. 
t Ibid. p. 153. 


136 A DEFENCE OF “‘THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


meaning, and yet parables were used to veil the mean- 
ing. If both purposes had been affirmed of the very 
same parables, one could have understood the objection. 
Who but our critic could have any difficulty in seeing 
that a parable, like any other form of figurative lan- 
guage, may be aptly used for both purposes, and often 
has been so in other compositions besides those of the 
New Testament? It may be used either to illustrate a 
truth, or to give it in outline; to make it clear, or to 
veil it. But this, involving a twofold aspect of the 
same thing, seems a troublesome perplexity to our crit- 
ic’s simplicity of understanding, and he must therefore 
have the parable always clear or always obscure, — 
always light or always darkness! 

But enough of what Mr. Newman says of the Para- 
bles ; the mere memory of some of them will at once 
show the reader the vanity of his criticism. ‘The para- 
ble of the “ Prodigal Son,” or the “ Good Samaritan,” 
shivers it all to atoms. Not all the petty carping in the 
world can prevent or will prevent the effect they have 
produced, and will ever produce, not only on the hum- 
blest, but the greatest minds; on philosophers and 
peasants, on age and childhood, on all imagination 
and all sensibility ;—-in a word, on the heart of hu- 
manity. Mr. Newman’s criticism may make men won- 
der at his taste, or the want of it, but it will not make 
them despise the parables of Jesus Christ. 

Again: take the alleged inconsistency of the state- 
ments respecting Christ’s unwillingness to perform 
miracles on some occasions when challenged to do so. 
Surely no reader of the New Testament will deny that 
miracles enough are recorded; and that therefore, if 
really performed, and unbelief asked for more, our Sav- 
iour might well be offended at such obstinacy of unbe- 
lief. If Mr. Newman says, “ Yes, but none of these 


CRITICISM ON ** THE PERFECTION OF CHRIST.”? 137 


miracles were performed: they were all fables ”;— 
then, as before, if he rejects the mass of the records, 
how is he so sure that the narrative respecting Christ’s 
being challenged to perform the miracles, and being 
unwilling to do so, is certainly true? Why will he 
destroy everything that can explain his conduct, as 
purely fabulous, and yet assume that the narrative of 
the actions which it would explain is trustworthy ? 
How is it that he thus ignores everything that can 
make for Christ as fabulous, but will not allow any- 
thing to be so, which, on the supposition that it alone 
is retained, makes against him? As before, the duty 
of a decorous silence would be the proper inference 
from such a style of historic criticism. 

All this is said, and much more might have been 
said, upon the supposition that Christ was a mere man, 
a common historical personage, to meet Mr. Newman 
on his own grounds. I now proceed one step further 
_ in the argument; and remark that, to many other of 
Mr. Newman’s criticisms, it is possible, I should imag- 
ine, for even Mr. Martineau to reply.. I know not what 
Mr. Martineaw’s degree of historical scepticism in rela- 
tion to the Gospels may be; how far he feels himself 
at liberty to pare away the Me ci element; to ques- 
tion fact, as well as explode miracle; but if he admits 
any special superhuman moral endowments in Christ 
at all,—as his language would sometimes imply, — 
he has, I suppose, a conclusive answer to Mr. New- 
man’s great argument. If he does deny every super- 
human endowment, as well as a divine nature, then 
Mr. Newman’s argument is of force; otherwise, hardly 
so. Mr. Newman reasons, that, if any one contends 
that Christ is a mere man, then he must hold that 
Christ must be morally imperfect; in other words, that 


God either could not or would not endow any human 
19 


138 A DEFENCE OF ‘“‘ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”? 


creature with capacities for exhibiting a perfect human 
virtue! Truly, it is a nice little metaphysical theorem ; 
but, like Mr. Newman’s theories of the “ origin of evil,” 
will seem to the world but scant in proof. 

Mr. Newman (as is too often the case) wraps up his 
meaning in language quite as “enigmatical” as that 
‘ he attributes so freely to Christ. He expressly affirms 
that Christ, if merely man, could not exhibit a “ perfect 
morality,” because, being man, he would be essentially 
imperfect, morally and in all respects. But he also 
uses the expressions (as if they were equivalent), that, 
being finite, he is to be assumed not to “exhaust all 
perfection” (p. 143),— that, being “ finite” in every 
other respect, he could not be “ infinite in moral perfec- 
tion” (p. 142). To most persons, the idea of a Being, 
just what man ought to be,—a model of human vir- 
tue, — would be very distinct from that of one “ ex- 
hausting all perfection,” and being “ infinite in moral 
perfection.” Mr. Newman always speaks just as if 
they were the same thing. Just add to this what he 
calls “a first principle of thought with him,” — that 
“no sort of perfection is possible to man,’—no mat- 
ter, I suppose, how God may create or endow him, — 
and you have an easy demonstration that Jesus Christ 
could not be “morally perfect” as man. Whether 
God has ever created such a being of course depends 
on proper historical evidence; Mr. Newman contents 
himself with the “high @ priori road.” ‘The species in 
general are morally imperfect, as finite ; therefore Christ 
must have been so! ‘There is a delightful and cheer- 
fal little corollary, which Mr. Newman ought to have 
appended to his strange metaphysics of the finite and 
the infinite; namely, that there neither is, can, nor will 
be in this or any world a single created being who is, 
even within the limits of such created nature, “ per- 


CRITICISM ON ** THE PERFECTION OF CHRIST.” 139 


fect,” or free from sin and frailty. . For being “ finite,” 
he could not exhibit “infinite moral perfection,” or “ez: 
haust all perfection.” A pleasant look-out for the uni- 
verse! With most men, the idea of a “ Perfect Man,” 
who is not necessarily an Infinite God also, will be 
tolerably distinct. 

This argument, he says, is what a Trinitarian would * 
employ.* 

The Trinitarian’s argument is mainly founded, first, 
on the whole evidence, internal and external, that Chris- 
tianity is of Divine origin; and secondly, admitting 
that, — that we cannot fairly account for the whole 
strain of what its Founder says of himself, or what 
others say of him, without coming to the conclusion 
that he is neither like any other man, nor exclusively 
man at all. Most Trinitarians, I fancy, would hesitate 
to affirm that it is impossible for God to endow a 
human being with capacities to exhibit a perfect hu- 
man virtue. 

On the most attenuated theory which admits any 
special endowments in Christ, the illustration of Mr. 
Newman,appears absurd. He asks, whether, if any 
one claimed “ moral perfection for his old schoolmaster 
or his parish priest,’ he would -not have a right to re- 
sent his claims! He might have waited till some one 
had claimed perfection for “his old schoolmaster or 
parish priest.” Meantime, it would be well for him to 
consider that it is very curious, and deserves some so- 
lution, that so many millions of Trinitarians and Uni- 
. tarians, amongst them so many men of the highest 
order of intellect and the largest culture, should have 
claimed moral perfection for Jesus Christ, while, it 
seems, there is not the smallest danger of their ever 
pe ra gets 1) i Se le 


* Phases, p. 141. 


140 A DEFENCE OF “* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


claiming anything of the sort for “any old schoolmas- 
ter or parish priest”; no, nor even for a James, a Peter, 
or a Paul, or any other of the sons of men! And this 
consideration alone might have led him to suppress 
any such comparisons; the question, to any one who 
admits a special commission, is as regards a Being, at 
all events, preternaturally endowed, even if not super- 
human himself, “and not about some old schoolmaster 
or parish priest!” 

To the ordinary Unitarian, of course, — whatever 
becomes of Mr. Martineau and his hypothesis, — and 
still more to the ‘Trinitarian, the argument between 
these two gentlemen ceases to have any interest, ex- 
cept so far as it is manifestly unjust to Christ, even as 
an ordinary historic personage, that any man should 
assail him as Mr. Newman has done; and that it fills 
them with disgust and horror to reflect that this gratu- 
itous odium is cast on one whom they do not regard as 
a common historic personage. The ordinary Unitarian 
believes, at all: events, that Christ was preternaturally 
endowed as no man ever was before, or will be again, 
-—miraculously commissioned to make good his lofty 
claims, — and invested with the character of the J udge 
of all men. Any argument on the assumption that, 
supposing Christ to have been man only, therefore, 
however preternaturally endowed by the Father of 
lights with knowledge, wisdom, and virtue, it was 
impossible he should exhibit a perfect human excellence, 
but must have been encompassed with imperfections 
and foibles, because a man, would be to them simply 
ridiculous. If Mr. Newman assert it, as, by conse- 
quence, he must with his theory of the Finite, the 
Unitarians would do well to hold him to a full proof of 
this pretty little metaphysical theorem, that God either 
never would or never could enable a single individual 


% 


CRITICISM ON ‘‘ THE PERFECTION OF CHRIST.” 141 


of our race to exhibit a perfect human wisdom or a 
perfect human virtue! It will last his time. 

To the Trinitarians, of course, such an argument 
would be of no avail; and with them, therefore, Mr. 
Newman does not urge it. Yet he cannot avoid cari- 
caturing their doctrine. Speaking of Christ’s death, 
and his relation to the instruments by whom He suf- * 
fered, he says: “If any one holds Jesus to be not 
amenable to the laws of human morality, I am not 
now reasoning with such a one. But if any one 
claims for him a human perfection, then I say that his 
conduct on this occasion was neither laudable nor 
justifiable: far otherwise.” * They do not affirm that, 
considered as man, he was not amenable to human 
morality. » How can they, when they believe that he 
was the great ideal of human morality? But believ- 
ing him not merely man, nor only man, they do not 
think that all his acts are to be measured by what all 
men may do; and in that they are no more inconsist- 
ent, than in affirming that fathers and their children, - 
kings and their subjects, are alike “amenable to the 
laws of human morality,’ though the difference of: 
their relations will make that rightful authority in the 
one which would be simply insolent contumacy and 
lawless arrogance in the other. Carry this principle 
fairly out to the modifications which not only a differ- 
ence of relations, but a superiority of nature, would im- 
pose,— apply them to Him who is believed to be Son 
of God as well as Son of Man, and the supposed anom- 
alies disappear. 

In relation to Christ’s death, Mr. Newman’s redoubt- 
able dilemma is easily met by both Unitarian and 
Trinitarian. If Mr. Newman affirm that nothing could 


ia ee 


* Phases, p. 159. 
19 * } 


142 A DEFENCE OF ** THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


justify Christ in assailing the rulers, supposing him 
merely man, the answer is, that He denounced their 
crimes, and righteously denounced them,—did the 
truest and the justest thing, — regardless of the con- 
sequences. If it be said, that even though he were the 
Son of God, foreknowing the results, it was a crime to 
do this, the answer is the same: “ Fiat justitia, ruat 
cclum.” If it be made a difficulty at all, it will carry 
us one step further, and bring us to one of those meta- 
physical theorems, which Mr. Newman is too apt to 
forget, but which will last our day,— namely, how it 
is that God, foreseeing that the punishment which He 
inflicts will exasperate men, and make them worse, 
nevertheless inflicts it, and equitably works out the re- 
sults of His Providence, by means of the crimes and 
follies He infallibly foresees, and yet does not prevent. 
If Christ was merely man, He was a martyr to “ loving 
righteousness and hating iniquity” ;—if God as well, 
He did no more than God does! When Mr. Newman 
has reconciled the absolute prescience of God with the 
free will and responsibility of his guilty creatures, it 
will be time to consider the difficulties in this last 
problem. 

And now, what, after all, does all the carping criti- 
cism of this chapter amount to? Little as it is in 
itself, it absolutely vanishes, — it 1s felt that the Christ 
here portrayed cannot be the right interpretation of the 
history, — in the face of all those glorious scenes with 
which the Evangelical narrative abounds, but of which 
there is here an entire oblivion. But Humanity will 
not forget them; men still wonder at the “gracious 
words which proceeded out of Christ’s mouth,’ and 
persist in saying, “ Never man spake like this man.” 
The brightness of the brightest names pales and wanes 
before the radiance which shines from the person of 


* 


CRITICISM ON “THE PERFECTION OF CHRIST.” 143 


Christ. The scenes at the tomb of Lazarus, at the 
gate of Nain, in the happy family at Bethany, in the 
“upper room,” where He instituted the beautiful feast 
which should for ever consecrate His memory, and be- 
queathed to His disciples the legacy of His love; the 
scenes in the Garden of Gethsemane, on the summit 
of Calvary, and at the Sepulchre; the sweet remem- 
brance of the patience with which He bore wrong, the 
gentleness with which He rebuked it, and the love 
with which He forgave it; the thousand acts of be- 
nign condescension by which He well earned for Him- 
self, from self-righteous pride and censorious hypocrisy, 
the name of the “ friend of publicans and sinners ” ; — 
these, and a hundred things more which crowd those 
concise memorials of love and sorrow with such prodi- 
gality of beauty and of pathos, will still continue to 
charm and attract the soul of humanity, and on these 
the highest genius as well as the humblest mediocrity 
will love to dwell. These things lisping infancy loves 
to hear on its mother’s knees, and over them age, with 
its gray locks, bends in devoutest reverence. No; be- 
fore the infidel can prevent the influence of these com- 
positions, he must get rid of the Gospels themselves, or 
he must supplant them by /ictions yet more wonderful! 
Ah! what bitter irony has involuntarily escaped me! 
But if the last be impossible, at least the Gospels must 
cease to exist before Infidelity can succeed. Yes, be- 
fore infidels can prevent men from thinking as they 
ever have done of Christ, they must blot out the gentle 


_ words with which, in the presence of austere hypocrisy, 


the Saviour welcomed that timid guilt that could only 
express its silent love in an agony of tears ;— they 
must blot out the words addressed to the dying peni- 
tent, who, softened by the majestic patience of the 
mighty Sufferer, detected at last the Monarch under the 


144 A DEFENCE OF “*S THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


veil of sorrow, and cast an imploring glance to be “re- 
membered by Him when He came into His king- 
dom” ;—they must blot out the scene in which the 
demoniacs — or the maniacs, if the infidel will, for it 
does not help him — sat listening at his feet, and “in 
their right mind” ;— they must blot out the remem- 
brance of the tears which He shed at the grave of Laz- 
arus, not surely for him whom He was about to raise, 
but in pure sympathy with the sorrows of humanity, 
for the myriad myriads of desolate mourners, who 
could not, with Mary, fly to Him and say, “ Lord, if 
Thou hadst been here, my mother — brother — sister — 
had not died!”—they must blot out the record of 
those miracles which charm us, not only as the proofs 
. of His mission and guaranties of the truth of His 
doctrine, but as they illustrate the benevolence of His 
character, and are types of the spiritual cures His Gos- 
pel can yet perform ; — they must blot out the scenes of 
the Sepulchre, where love and veneration lingered, and 
‘saw what was never seen before, but shall henceforth 
be seen to the end of time,—the Tomb itself irradi- 
ated with angelic forms, and bright with the presence 
of Him “who brought life and immortality to light” ; 
— they must blot out the scene where deep and grate- 
ful love wept so passionately, and found Him unbid- 
den at her side, —type of ten thousand times ten thou- 
sand, who have “ sought the grave to weep there,” and 
found joy and consolation in Him, “whom, though un- 
seen, they loved” ; — they must blot out the discourses 
in which he took leave of His disciples, the majestic 
accents of which have filled so many departing souls 
with patience and with triumph ; — they must blot out 
the yet sublimer words in which He declares Himself 
“the Resurrection and the Life,’ — words which have 
led so many millions more to breathe out their spirits 


CRITICISM ON ** THE PERFECTION OF CHRIST.” 145 


with childlike trust, and to believe, as the gate of 
death closed behind them, they would see Him who is 
invested with the “keys of the invisible world,” “ who 
opens and no man shuts, and shuts and no man 
opens,” letting in through the portal which leads to 
immortality the radiance of the skies;—they must 
blot out, they must destroy, these and a thousand other 
such things, before they can prevent Him from having 
the Preéminence, who loved, because He loved us, to 
call Himself the “Son of Man,” though angels called 
Him the “Son of God.” 

It is in vain to tell men it is an illusion. If it be an 
illusion, every variety of experiment. proves it to be in- 
veterate, and will not be dissipated by a million of , 
Strausses and Newmans! Probatum est. At His 
feet guilty humanity of diverse races and nations for 
eighteen hundred years has come to pour forth in faith 
and love its sorrows, and finds there “the peace which 
the world can neither give nor take away.” Myriads 
of aching heads and weary hearts have found and will 
find repose there, and have invested Him with venera- 
tion, love, and gratitude, which will never, never be — 
paid to any other name than His. \ 

Nor let it be said it is the moral necessities of man — 
his guilt and sorrows —which thus attract him to the 
Saviour. As a. fact, it matters not; the illusion, if . 
illusion it be, cannot be dispelled by that consideration ; 
for the moral necessities of the human heart — its guilt 
and sorrows — are not likely to cease in a hurry, nor to 
be met in any other or better way, than the compre- 
hensive sympathy of Him who “was in all points 
tempted like as we are,” and can be “touched with 
the feeling of our infirmities, though without sin.” As 
long as the memorials of His acts and words remain, 
so long will He continue to exert His strange power 


146 A DEFENCE OF “‘ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.’ 


over humanity, and until infidelity destroys them, there 
is no hope of its success. 

But, in fact, the plea is not true. Multitudes of the 
loftiest minds have deeply investigated His claims, and 
admitted them; genius of the highest order in science, 
and poetry, and art, has brought its richest trophies, 
and humbly laid them at His feet; the very chiefest of 
the Western sages, like those of the East, have come to 
offer Him “frankincense, and gold, and myrrh,” the 
noblest offerings of intellect, the divinest performances 
of art. Genius, true to its instincts after the beautiful 
and the sublime, even when it has not been constrained 
to pay a homage yet better than that of the intellect 
_.and the imagination, has not been insensible to His 
claims; it has poured forth a richer tribute to His 
honor than all the mythologies of antiquity could 
boast. He it is whose character and image have 
chiefly weaned men from their base idolatry of mere 
Power and Intellect, and made them see that in moral 
greatness there is a radiance brighter still. He it is 
who has chiefly made them recognize the essential 
identity of the “beautiful and the good.” No one of 
the human race has exerted one thousandth part of the 
power, directly or indirectly, in moulding the thought 
and feeling, in developing the practical energies, of the | 
most various and cultured nations of the earth. And 
if it be said, “ And have not other religions, besides 
that dedicated to Christ, called forth the homage of the 
intellect and the tributes of genius?” I answer, Yes, 
though not in so great a measure, nor anything like it, 
nor from half the various races that have paid homage to 
His name. But in relation to the present point, — the 
probability of this illusion, if illusion, being dispelled, 
—here is the difference. ‘Those other and false re- 
ligions have never stood the tests of Christianity, — 


CRITICISM ON “THE PERFECTION OF CHRIST.” 147 


nay, have never even waited to come fairly in contact 
with them. That is the great difference in calculating 
whether the influence of Christ is likely now to be 
. destroyed. They perish before the influences which 
Christianity resists and surmounts; cradled in barba- 
rism, nurtured by local and national genius, they are 
hybrids of the religious instinct and poetic fancy, and, 
like other hybrids, they cannot propagate. Military 
conquest, political revolution, shatter them to pieces ; 
they do not pass from race to race, nor emigrate from 
clime to clime. What is still more fatal to them is 
advancing science: these things of darkness are at 
once transfixed by the shafts of light; the mythologies 
of Greece and Rome were laughed at long before they 
‘were finally extinguished; a score of mythologies 
more have perished since that day; at this moment 
Brahma and Vishnu are quaking on their precarious 
thrones; and old Buddha lies sprawling on the rivers 
of China. It is not so with the religion of Christ; in 
the midst of the most literate and cultured ages which 
the world has yet seen, and which Christianity itself 
has tended to produce, (for they have sprung up con- 
temporaneously with its influence, and its realms stil] 
mark, with more distinctness than anything else, the 
frontiers of intellectual day and night, being brightest 
where it is brightest, and usually brighter than else- 
where even where it is comparatively dim,) —in these 
ages, Christ still holds his own; and though in the 
very midst of His Church arise from time to time an 
endless succession of adversaries, they cannot prevail. 
Its followers retain their faith; genius, large, cultured, 
comprehensive, soberly declares its evidence impreg- 
nable. Pascal and Butler, and men like them, en- 
dowed with ‘the most comprehensive minds, after 
the profoundest study, have bowed at the Redeemer’s 


148 A DEFENCE OF *¢ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


shrine; and the greatest master of Epic song, rich with 
all the culture of all ages, “rich with the spoils of 
time,” — whose strains so emulate that still sublimer 
poesy on which his lofty muse was modelled, believed 
when he wrote his “ Paradise Lost,’ not merely that 
he was “adorning a poetic theme,” but that he was 
celebrating fact;—the conflict of Immortal Hate and 
Immortal Love. Who shall dissipate this deep illu- 
sion, thus inveterate, and solicited by every means of 
cure, but in vain? 

And is this Personage, who has so taken captive the 
sons of men, and so inscribed His image on the soul 
of humanity, likely to be injured by a little bit of carp- 
ing and captious sophistry? The critic might as well 
stretch out his hand to pluck Orion from his sphere. 


CHARGES OF “PROFANITY.” = ~°—«149 


Sie how XIE, 
CHARGES OF “PROFANITY,” AND SO FORTH. 


Mr. Newman says: “ The sceptic whom he (the Au- 
thor of ‘The Eclipse’) sets at me is essentially a pro- 
fane intellect, free to ridicule the most fundamental 
principles of the New Testament. He can, at pleasure, 
not only disown, —‘ God hath chosen the poor of this 
world, rich in faith, — and ‘not many wise are called’: 
he also assumes that acuteness of understanding, with- 
out sanctity of heart, opens divine knowledge to us, 
and that a man who blunders in questions of history 
and of literature ought to be despised in religion. 
Such pleas are vehemently pressed against me by this 
Mr. Harrington, and (unless the Author is most grossly 
iniquitous) are believed by the Author.”* Is it not 
strange to hear Mr. Newman, who has written the 
chapter on “The Moral Perfection of Christ,” — who 
rejects everything that is preternatural in Christianity, 
—who would deal with the New Testament just as 
cavalierly as with Cicero,—nay, more so, one would 
think, for he affirms that’“the Latin moralists effected 
what (strange to think!) the New Testament writers 
alone could not do”; +— who retains no one knows 
how small a modicum of what is found between the 
covers of that book, and interprets even that in an 
esoteric sense, —is it not strange, I say, that he should 
feel himself in a condition to rebuke a “ profane intel- 


* Reply, p. 19. T Phases, p. 97. 
20 


150 A DEFENCE OF “THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


lect, as free to ridicule the most fundamental principles 
.of the New Testament”? Or does he expect a sceptic 
to be more ceremonious with modern spiritualism than 
Mr. Newman is with Christianity? Or, lastly, does he 
think that even a sceptic cannot discern the difference 
between ridiculing modern spiritualism and ridiculing 
Christianity? However, he is quite mistaken in sup- 
posing that I think, or that Harrington thought, that 
“acuteness of understanding, without sanctity of heart, 
opens divine knowledge to us, and that a man who 
blunders in questions of history and of literature ought 
to be despised in religion.” 

In the absence of citation and reference here, it is 
rather hard to know on what Mr. Newman founds his 
allegation; but if he means that Harrington may be 
suspected of “ despising men in religion because they 
have blundered in questions of literature and history,” 
on account of his stating that, on the spiritualist hy- 
pothesis, the Apostles must have been either the most 
“abominable impostors, or the most miserable fanat- 
ics,’* one cannot but admire the candor and discern- 
ment of Mr. Newman. Mere “blunders in literature 
and history”! No, I here “indorse” every word that 
Harrington says. If the Apostles “untruly affirmed 
that they saw and did the things they say they saw 
and did,” they must have been either the vilest impos- 
tors or the most visionary of fanatics. They may well 

be “despised in religion,” for they were fit only for 
Newgate or Bedlam. The reader will not forget that 
it is on the spiritualist hypothesis that Harrington is, 
as usual, arguing. 

Nor am I of opinion that “acuteness of intellect 
without sanctity of heart will” effectually “open divine 


* Kelipse, p. 43. 


CHARGES OF ‘¢ PROFANITY.”’ 151 


knowledge to us.” But, I think, —and I rather think 
I am still likely to think,—that if there be, as Mr. 
Newman contends and I concede, a religious element 
in Man,—not in this man or that man, not in one 
here and there, but in Man, —then that the evidence 
which substantiates any true theory of religion ‘must 
be, at least, tolerably appreciable by every man who 
sincerely examines it. The theory of “ The Soul,” if 
true, surely must be addressed to all, not to a few hap- 
pily constituted minds; or would Mr. Newman say 
that he wrote only for those who were already of his 
mind? If so, why did he write at all? If not, why 
does he wonder that men think themselves competent 
to criticize? What would be thought of Christianity, 
if, addressing all men, it should not only say (what it 
does say), that only ee can fully comprehend it who 
embrace it, and so ezperience its power to make good 
its claims, but that its evidence could not be at all 
appreciated by any but such? that, if accepted, it had 
nothing, before its acceptance, to convince the intellect 
of those who as yet had not embraced it, and who, 
before embracing it, could not have that evidence 
which experience alone can give, — nothing to rebuke 
those who would not examine it, or, examining it, re- 
jected it? This is not the case with Christianity, I 
trow ; nor can it be the case with any other system of 
religion which addresses Man as Man, and gives the 
true theory of our religious nature. Harrington him- 
self has so truly stated the point, that Iam surprised ° 
that Mr. Newman should thus have mistaken either 
the sceptic or myself. 

“ What title has Mr. Newman, when avowedly ex- 
plaining the phenomena of the religious faculty, which 
he asserts to be inherent in humanity, — though how 
they should need explaining, if Ais theory be true, I 


152 A DEFENCE OF ‘** THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


know not,— what title has he, when men deny that 
they are conscious of the facts he describes, to take ref- 
uge in his own private revelations and that of the few 
whose privilege it is to be ‘born again’ by a myste- 
rious law which he says it is impossible for us to in- 
vestigate?..... This is not to delineate the religious 
nature of humanity, but to reveal—yes, and to re- 
veal externally —the religious nature of the elect few; 
and few they are indeed, who, by a mysterious infidel 
Calvinism, are permitted to attain, by direct intuition, 
and independent of all. external revelation, the true 
sentiments and experiénces of spiritual insight....:. 
If the answer merely respected the practical value of a 
theory of spiritual sentiments,..... then Mr. New- 
man’s answer might have some force; for, certainly, 
only he who reduced that theory to pmelite or at- 
tempted to do so, would have a right to conclude 
against the experience of him who did. But it is ob- 
vious that the question respects the theory itself, and 
especially the consciousness of those terms of possible 
communion with God, those relations of the soul to 
him, on the reception of which all the said spiritual 
experience must depend.” 

My opinions are so far from being those attributed 
to me by Mr. Newman, that though I believe that the 
evidences of Christianity are appreciable by all who 
will honestly examine them, yet its plenary proofs are 
only for those who embrace it, live it, practise it; and, 
‘for that very reason, I believe it is indestructible on 
earth, for it is thus apprehended and cherished by mil- 
lions who know but very little of its evidences, tech- 
nically so called; who, surrendering themselves to 
that great Teacher and Example it sets forth, and 
realizing the peace which the world cannot give nor 
‘take away, feel an invincible persuasion that the re- 


CHARGES OF ‘* PROFANITY.” 153 


ligion of Christ comes from God and leads to him ;— 
a species of evidence which no subtlety of reasoning 
will ever be able to subvert. He who knows by shis 
experimental knowledge can say to the most learned 
advocates of Christianity, “ Now we believe, not be- 
cause of thy saying, for we have seen Him ourselves.” 
_ In one of the voyages to discover a Northeast Pas- 
sage,— a course often tried before the still more nu- 
merous attempts to find one by the Northwest (that 
enterprise so long pursued, and now so happily accom- 
plished, and signalizing, like so many other wonderful 
things, this eventful age), — Barentz, a Dutch mariner, 
wintered on the eastern coast of Nova Zembla. It was 
the first party of Europeans that had ever spent the 
long polar night on those desolate shores. _One day 
some of his crew came joyfully to Barentz, and de- 
clared they had seen part of the sun’s disc grazing the 
horizon. He declared, on scientific grounds, that it 
was impossible. He assured them it could not be: 
they told him it was. The next day, and the next, fogs 
obstinately filled the sky, and the argument went on. 
On the third day the atmosphere was clear, and going 
out they saw the whole of the glorious orb above the 
edge of the horizon, and “rejoiced in its beams.” They 
say that Barentz still declared that it could not be, or 
ought not to be. But did they heed him? No; what 
he said could not be, they saw, was ; that was sufficient. 
The Christian can, in like manner, say: “I have seen 
the ‘sun of righteousness’ rising on the deep polar 
night of guilt and sorrow, and there is not only radi- 
ance, but warmth and ‘healing in his beams.” But 
I suppose even Barentz was competent to judge of the 
evidence, and might have preferred his eyes to his pre- 
possessions. And even in like manner may the infidel 


be summoned and entitled to examine the evidences of 
20 * 


154 A DEFENCE OF *“*THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


Christianity. How much more may a sceptic freely 
canvass the doctrines of “ The Soul!” 

Mr. Newman quotes, with vivid indignation, the pas- 
sage in which Harrington rebukes (as I conceive with 
merited severity) the use, by such “spiritual infidels” 
as Mr. Fellowes, of Scriptural language, in a sense 
which the sacred writers would have utterly protested | 
against. : | 

“I cannot suspect you of hypocrisy,” says Harring- 
ton, “but I confess I regard your language as cant. 
As I listen to you, I seem to see a hybrid between 
Prynne and Voltaire. So far from its being true that 
you have renounced the letter of the Bible and re- 
tained its spirit, I think it would be much more correct 
to say, comparing your infidel hypothesis with your 
most spiritual dialect, that you have renounced the 
spirit of the Bible and retained its letter.” “ But are 
you in a condition to give an opinion?” said Fel- 
lowes, with a serious air. Mr. Newman says, in a like 
ease: “* The natural man discerneth not the things of 
the spirit of God, because they are foolishness unto 
him’: it is ‘the spiritual man only who searches the 
deep things of God.’ At the same time, I freely ac- 
knowledge that I never could see my way clear to em- 
ploy an argument which looks so arrogant; and the 
less, as I believe, with Mr. Parker, that the only 
true revelation is in all men alike.” So far in the 
“ Hclipse.” 

“ Now,” says Mr. Newman, “I will not here farther 
insist on the monstrosity of bringing forward St. Paul’s 
words as mine, in order to pour contempt upon them ; 
a monstrosity which no sophistry of Mr. Harrington 
can justify.” * j 


* Reply, p. 12. 


CHARGES OF ‘“* PROFANITY.” 155 


I think the real monstrosity is, that men should so 
coolly employ St. Paul’s words — for it is a quotation 
from the treatise on “The Soul” —to mean some- 
thing totally different from anything he intended to 
convey by them, and employ the dialect of the Apostles 
to contradict their doctrine ;— that is the monstrosity ; ; 
and that is it which the citation from Paul is designed 
to exemplify ; it is not to pour contempt on his words, 
but on a “monstrous” perversion of them. It is very 
hard to conceive that Mr. Newman did not see this ; 
but rather than suspect him of the meanness of doing 
what he so freely imputes to me, — of wilfully sup- 
pressing a passage which would at once have explained 
the meaning, — I will suppose it. But had he gone on 
only a few sli the reader would have seen Harring- 
ton saying: “Those words you have just quoted 
were well in Paul’s mouth, and hada meaning. In 
yours, I suspect, they would have none, or a very differ- 
ent one. He dreamt that he was giving to mankind 
(vainly, as it seems) a system of doctrines and truths 
which were, many of them, transcendental to the 
human intellect and conscience, and which, when re- 
vealed, were very distasteful, and not least to you.” * 

Similar observations apply to another of Mr. New- 
man’s particularly solemn rebukes. 

In “The Eclipse” Mr. Fellowes says: —“ We sepa- 
rate the dross of Christianity from its fine gold. ‘The 
letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. The fruit of the 
spirit is joy, peace, not cd 

“Upon my word,” said Harrington, laughing, “I 
shall presently begin to fancy that Douce Davie Deans 
has turned infidel, and- shall expect to hear of wes 
hand fallings-off and left-hand defections.” 


* Kclipse, p. 46. 


156 A DEFENCE OF “‘ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


“ T request,” says Mr. Newman, “the reader to con- 
sider whether, if we blot out the names Fellowes and 
Christianity, and put instead Paul and Judaism, Mr. 
Harrington’s scoffs would not have equal weight.” I 
answer, No; because the very gist of Harrington’s ridi- 
cule is directed, not against Paul, but against Mr. 
Fellowes,— against his abuse of Paul’s language to 
express views from which Paul would have recoiled 
with horror and indignation,—against the practical 
absurdity (calling it by no harsher name) of using 
apostolic language while utterly abjuring apostolic doc- 
trine ; —it is against that that Harrington’s sarcasm is 
directed, — against a “gospel” which Paul would 
utterly have disowned,— “another gospel” which is 
truly “not another,” but often a jumble (as I can bear 
witness in many instances) of the most incongruous 
dogmas of private fanaticism, stamped with the Chris- 
tian mark, and so foisted into current circulation. 
This old custom-house practice of “ kissing the book” 
for the purpose of passing a contraband theology, has 
become too common among many who utterly deny 
every distinctive feature of Christianity ; and, if carried 
out to its legitimate issue, would lead to a state of 
mind just like that of Strauss, who, having translated 
Christianity into a chaos of Hegelian Pantheism, 
gravely discussed the question whether a man in such 
a case might not still remain a clergyman, and preach 
historical Christianity in the letter to please his hearers, 
only taking due care not to let them understand that he 
understood it to be a thing of myths! Mr. Newman 
tells me that “I clearly have a profound unbelief in the 
Christian doctrine of Divine influence, or I could not 
thus, grossly insult it.’* I answer, God forbid that I 


* Reply, p. 7. 


a a 


CHARGES OF ‘* PROFANITY.”’ 157 


should “insult” it, whether it be the more special in- 
fluence — sometimes direct illumination, sometimes 
mere superintendence — which, as I fully believe, pre- © 
sided over the composition of the sacred Scriptures, 
or the ordinary, though mysterious action by which 
God aids those who sincerely seek him, “in every good 
word and work.” That which Harrington ridiculed — 
as the context would have shown Mr. Newman if he 
had had the patience to read on, and the calmness to 
judge —is the chaotic view of inspiration for poe 
held by Mr. Parker (who 1 is expressly referred to ink 
which Mr. Fellowes is represented as adhering; a 
proof again, if any were wanting, that Mr. Holloxatts 
was not designed to be the counterpart of Mr. New- 
man. Mr. Fellowes, indeed, naturally enough, invests 
Mr. Newman with such inspiration, as he must, on Mr. 
Parker’s theory, concede it to everybody else from 
whom he professed to derive any “spiritual” benefit 
at all. And surely, according to that theory, he is 
quite right; for if Minos and Praxiteles, and Numa 
and Titian, are inspired in the same sense as Moses 
and Christ, and Benjamin Franklin as truly as any 
of them, — lawgivers, artists, poets, and painters, — 
there are few men that might not put in a claim; 
nay, I think that the “ Inventor of Lucifer Matches ” 
(at the introduction of whose name Mr. Newman is so 
indignant), as well as the inventor of “ Eureka Shirts,” 
and a good many more, must also be admitted. As to 
the inventor of lucifer matches in particular, | am 
thoroughly convinced he has shed more light on the 
world, and been abundantly more useful to it, than 
many a cloudy expositor of modern “spiritualism.” 
Mr. Newman further says: “I am sorry to add, that in 


* Eclipse, p. 81. 


158 A DEFENCE OF ‘** THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


order to avert the indignation of his readers, and pre- 
tend it is some conceit and vanity of mine which he 
is ridiculing, he endeavors, in pages 10, 14, 46, and 
elsewhere, to instil into the reader that I make exclu- 
sive claims of inspiration for my single self. I wish I 
could think that he has sincerely mistaken me.” * He 
has what is tantamount to his wish then. In the above 
case I was speaking, as the context shows, of Mr. 
Parker’s theory of inspiration, and not his, which, in 
truth, I do not comprehend. Assuredly in none of the 
cited pages, nor “elsewhere,” is he represented as doing 
what he states. I never thought he made exclusive 
claim to “Inspiration”; rather I thought that, what- 
ever he deemed it, he made it only too cheap. He 
further says: “ I have already noted how falsely he in- 
sinuates that I claim some exclusive inspiration, where- 
as I only claim that which all pious Christians and 
Jews since David have always claimed.” + Does Mr. 
Newman mean that he claims as much as the Apostles 
claimed, whether they did so rightfully or not? If so, 
he claims enough, and a good deal more than I should 
be disposed to grant him. The last utterance of Mr. 
Newman on this subject that I have read, occurs in his 
preface to the second edition of his “ Hebrew Mon- 
archy,” where he tells us that he believes it is an influ- 
ence accessible to all men, in a certain stage of develop- 
ment! Surely it will be time to consider his theory of 
Inspiration when he has told us a little more about it. 
To my mind, if the very Genius of Mystery had 
framed the definition, it could not have uttered any- 
thing more indefinite. 


* Reply, p. 7. t Ibid. p. 12. 


NEW TESTAMENT AND SLAVERY. 159 


eC ELON ox 1 C1. 


MR. NEWMAN’S REPLY TO THE NOTES RESPECTING 
“ SLAVERY” AND THE “EARLY PROGRESS OF CHRIS- 
TIANITY.” 


Anoruer remarkable passage in the new edition of 
“The Phases” deserves notice. “Mr. Newman had 
asserted that the New Testament sanctioned slavery, 
and was, in fact, the “argumentative stronghold of 
the accursed system.” I endeavored to show that it- 
does not sanction slavery; that it simply does not-de- 
nounce it;—that this caution, in the then condition 
of the world, was necessary, if the Apostles were to 
gain a hearing at all; and wise, since they would do 
more by quietly diffusing the principles which, if tri- 
umphant, must exterminate slavery, than by passion- 
ately denouncing it ;— that experience has shown that 
only amongst Christian nations is there any extensive 
or combined movement against slavery ; that hatred 
of it becomes more and more active in proportion as 
people become more and more Christian. I remarked 
that this was the only way, without perpetual miracle, 
by which any religious reformer could propagate his 
system; and that, if any one were sufficiently in love 
with the new systems of spiritualism to go as mis- 
sionary to the East to preach them, he would not, in 
addition, publicly denounce “the social and political 
evils under which the nations groaned; or that if he 
did, his spiritual projects would soon be perfectly un- 
derstood and summarily dealt with.’ I added, ad- 


160 A DEFENCE OF °** THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


dressing Mr. Fellowes, “ It is vain to say, that, if com- 
missioned by Heaven, and endowed with power of 
working miracles, you would do so; for you cannot 
tell under what limitations your commission would be 
given: it is pretty certain, that it would leave you to 
work a moral and spiritual system by moral and spirit- 
ual means, and not allow you to turn the world upside 
down, nor mendaciously tell it that you came only to 
‘preach peace, while every syllable you uttered would 
be an incentive to sedition.” * .On this Mr. Newman 
comments as follows: “This writer supposes he is at- 
tacking me, when every line is an attack on Christ 
and Christianity. Have I pretended power of working 
miracles? Have I imagined or desired that miracle 
should shield me from persecution? ‘Did Jesus not 
‘publicly denounce the social and political evils’ of 
Judea? Was he not ‘summarily dealt with’? Did 
he not know that his doctrine would send on earth, 
‘not peace, but a sword’? and was he mendacious in 
saying, ‘ Peace I leave unto you’? or were the angels 
mendacious in proclaiming ‘ Peace on earth, good-will 
among men’? Was not ‘every syllable that Jesus 
uttered’ in the discourse of Matt. xxiil. ‘an incentive 
to sedition’? and does this writer judge it to be men- 
dacity, that Jesus opened by advising to obey the very 
men whom he proceeds to vilify at large as immoral, 
oppressive, hypocritical, blind, and destined to the 
damnation of hell? Or have I anywhere blamed the 
Apostles because they did not exasperate wicked men 
by direct attacks? It is impossible to answer such a 
writer as this; for he elaborately misses to touch what 
I have said. On the other hand, it is rather too much 
to require me to defend Jesus from his assault.” 7 


* Eclipse, p. 422. + Phases, 2d ed., pp. 106, 107. ~ 


a 


NEW TESTAMENT AND SLAVERY. ) 161 


My assault! I trust that that Name is safe enough 
from my assault. I must beg Mr. Newman to recol- 
lect that he wrote the preceding paragraph, not £ I 
admit, however, that “it is rather too much to require 
him to defend Jesus” from any assault; since his chap- 
ter on “ ‘The Moral Perfection of Jesus ” shows that he 
is much better skilled in assailing him. No; I shall 
not repair to my critic for any such purpose; if I 
wanted to palliate the conduct of the Pharisees, in- 
deed, that chapter instructs me where to go. 

“ It is impossible,” he says, “to answer such a writer 
as this.” I think it is impossible to answer any writer 
by asking a number of irrelevant questions. But it is 
very possible to answer him; and so now for the ques- 
tions of his catechism, taken seriatin. i 

1. “ Have I pretended power of working miracles ?” 

Answer. Not that I know of; did I ever say he had? 

2. “Have I imagined or desired that miracle should 
shield me from persecution ? ” 

Answer. I cannot tell what he has “ imagined or 
desired”; but Iam sure I hope there is no need of a 
miracle to shield him from persecution. 

3. “Did Jesus not publicly denounce the social and 
political evils of Judxa ?” 

Answer. He did not denounce the political evils, as 
is plain from His conduct with regard to the tribute- 
money, in which this consistent censor blames His 
“evasion”; and from His answer to the man who 
wished Him to interfere about the “division of his 
inheritance”: nor did He denounce any other social 
evils than such as followed directly from the perver- 
sions of the Mosaic law by its professed administra- 
tors, — the Scribes and Pharisees. The corruptions of 
that Theocracy which He came at once to vindicate 


and to abolish, He did denounce, and, as a religious 
21 


/ 


162 A DEFENCE OF “THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.’ 


reformer, most consistently and justly. All the evils 
He denounced were directly involved in its maleadmin- 
istration, — which had “destroyed the law of God 
by man’s traditions”: and this may be seen by any 
one who considers what those evils were, from the 
“pretence of long prayers,” and “making broad the 
phylacteries,” to the “devouring of widows’ houses” 
and the perversion of the fifth commandment. ‘The 
Pharisees wished him, indeed, to go further, but He 
was too wise to be entrapped; a thing which it is 
strange Mr. Newman should overlook, since he has 
censured Him for His asserted evasion. 

_ 4, “ Was He not summarily dealt with?” 

Answer. He was; and would have been yet more 
summarily dealt with, and with less trouble to the 
Pharisees, if he had done that which Mr. Newman 
insinuates that He did, but did not. 

5. “ Did He not know that His doctrine would send 
on earth, not peace, but a sword ?” 

Answer. Yes; He knew that His religious doctrine 
_ would, and He told the truth. 

6. “ And was He mendacious in sayings ‘Peace I 
leave unto you’?” 

Answer. No; though Mr. Newman would insinu- 
ate that He was. He came to “bring peace,” though 
He also came to “bring a sword”; He came to bring | 
peace, and He did not come to eae: peace ; which, 
though it be unintelligible to a man who is resolved 
that the same words shall always have the same mean- 
ing, is very intelligible to millions of Christians, who 
have perfectly well understood that Christianity may 
involve “the loss of all things,’ and yet fill the soul 
with a peace which overpays them all; and it is the 
less excusable in Mr. Newman not to see this, since 
our Lord explained the paradox by telling the whole 


NEW TESTAMENT AND SLAVERY. 163 


truth, of which Mr. Newman here sophistically gives 
half: “ Peace I leave with you...... In the world ye 
shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have 
overcome the world.” } 

7. “ Were the angels mendacious in proclaiming 
‘ Peace on earth, good-will among men’ ?” 

Answer. No; for a similar reason. 

8. “ Was not every syllable that Jesus uttered in 
His discourse of Matt. xxiii. an incentive to sedition ?” 

Answer. No; it was a just denunciation of the 
most horrible moral and religious delinquencies on the 
part of the most odious traitors to God and man, pro- 
nounced by One (as we believe) divinely authorized to 
pronounce it, and which, though it might indirectly 
lead to sedition, He was bound to pronounce. 

9. “ And does this writer judge it to be mendacity 
that Jesus opened by advising to obey the very men 
whom he proceeds to vilify at. large as immoral, op- 
pressive, and hypocritical ?” 

Answer. No; though again Mr. Newman takes care 
to insinuate that Christ was mendacious; as if Christ 
enjoined his disciples to obey these men in the very 
points in which he told them not to obey them. He 
tells them_they are to “obey ” their-spiritual rulers in 
the things they enjoin, “as sitting in Moses’s seat,” 
and proclaiming his precepts; but that they are not to 
do after their works, “since they say, and do not.” 
Nor did He “ vilify” the Pharisees, whom Mr. New- 
man seems disposed to pet, but justly characterized 
them. 

10. “Or have I anywhere blamed the Apostles be- 
cause they did not exasperate wicked men by direct 
attacks 2” > 

Answer. What does he mean by “direct” attacks, 
and what does he mean by “ wicked” men? 


4 
164 A DEFENCE OF “THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


I only know that he found fault with the “ New 
Testament” for not denouncing slavery as an immo- 
rality; to denounce it, I suppose, would have been a 
direct attack upon it. Mr. Newman certainly appeared 
to infer that: this silence implied a justification and 
sanction of slavery ;— which is denied. He now says: 
“I merely pointed out what it was that they (the 
Apostles) actually taught, and that, as a fact, they did 
not declare slavery to be an immorality, and the basest 
of thefts. If any one thinks their course was more 
wise, he may be right or wrong, but his opinion is in 
itself a concession of my fact.”* Passing by the con- 
fusion of expression about “pointing out what the 
Apostles actually taught,’ which, in point of fact, 
turns out to be something they did not teach, few per- 
sons would have complained of the representation. 
No doubt the Apostles did not denounce slavery as 
the “basest of thefts,’ but the question is, whether 
that non-denunciation sanctions it, or fairly makes the 
New Testament the “argumentative stronghold of the 
accursed system”; for this Mr. Newman asserted it 
to be. 

A religious reformer must, of course, by that very 
fact that he is one, denounce the moral and spiritual 
vices opposed to what he conscientiously believes to be 
religious truth; and like the Apostles, or Luther in 
later times, will brave (as these did) all the opposition 
which may meet him on that score, and even all the 
indirect possibilities of civil commotion which may 
ensue from this necessary proclamation of the truth. 
But it is absurd to suppose, that therefore he is bound 
to denounce the social and political abuses of the com- 
munity he addresses: this may not be possible, if he is 
le PS I reer nacre oc reunneaal 

* Phases, p. 107. 


— 
an} 


NEW TESTAMENT AND SLAVERY. 165 


to gain a hearing for the principles he teaches, or even 
if he wisely calculates for the extinction of those evils 
themselves. For this reason, it does not follow that 
he will even denounce all those evils which his fol- 
lowers may very properly denounce, and the condemna- 
tion of which may be involved in the very principles he 
proclaims; as I firmly believe slavery is condemned by 
the principles of the “ New Testament.” He will not 
denounce these things, that his mouth may not be 
shut at once; that his doctrine may not be justifiably 
accused of seditious tendencies, and thus “ summarily ” 
put down. As this is the course which common sense 
points out for the religious reformer, so it has been 
the course acted on, not by Apostles only, but by the 
wisest of all time, and in proportion to their wisdom. 
And as thus it must be, if success is to attend any 
such enterprises at all, so I put it on a practical issue. 
I ask, as I asked Mr. Fellowes, whether, if any one 
should have the compassion to go and preach that 
“ spiritualism,” which, if we may believe Mr. Newman, 
might convert Hindoos and Mahometans,* and, it 
seems, does not very readily convert Englishmen, — 
and really it seems hard not to enlighten mankind, 
where they are willing to be enlightened, and to per- 
sist in enlightening them where they are not, — I ask, 
I say, in that case, whether the said missionary would 
denounce political and social evils, as well as all else 
he denounced? If he says, Yes; I say, then, his sys- 
tem of religious reformation will be summarily dealt 
with, and his hopes of any success brought to a sud- 
den termination. If he says, No, then he need not 
wonder that the “ New Testament” is silent on these 
topics too. 


* Soul, pp. 244, 258. 


21" 


166 A DEFENCE OF “* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


I had said that Mr. Newman proclaims “his hatred 
of despotism and slavery, where such magnanimity is 
perfectly safe and perfectly superfluous.” Mr. New- 
man takes this as an affront. I did not mean to ques- 
tion his courage (about which I knew nothing) ; since 
to act as he seems to think the Apostles ought to have 
acted would not be courage in my estimation, but 
mere foolhardiness. I simply meant to imply, by the 
sarcasm, that not even he can carry out, or would 
carry out, the theory which blames the Apostles for 
not adding to the proclamation of what they believed 
religious truth, a crusade against slavery, despotism, 


and other political and social evils. Mr. Newman in- — 


dignantly denounces the crimes of the house of Haps- 
burg, — long may he be able and willing to do so!— 
but it would be no “magnanimity” in him to pro- 
claim the same sentiments in the “ market-place” of 
Vienna, or from the “house-tops” of St. Petersburg, 
but sheer idiocy. Now, when I find any religious re- 
former proclaiming the new spiritualism, or any other 
modification of Deism, and neglecting the same prac- 
tical regard to common sense as to what and where 
they speak, then I shall be willing to allow that they 
are at least consistent in the theory in virtue of which 
they censure the Apostles; but I can hardly hope that 
they will get any one to listen to them.’ 

Mr. Newman, indeed, thinks it probable that the 
Apostles might as harmlessly have denounced slavery 
as the Quakers have done in America. “It is matter 
of conjecture, whether any greater convulsion would 
have happened if the Apostles had done as the Quakers 
in America. No Quaker holds slaves; why not? Be- 
cause the Quakers teach their members that it is an 
essential immorality.”* Yes, it is matter of conjecture ; 


* Phases, p. 107. 


fd I ae 


= 9. ee yD 


NEW TESTAMENT AND SLAVERY. 167 


and therefore the Apostles, I should imagine, living at 
the time, and required to act in the case, were the only 
proper judges. In the mean time, we are tolerable 
judges of Mr. Newman’s parallel. Quakers teach their 
—members! Yes; but not to insist that they live under 
a constitutional government (where the bulk of the 
people are themselves Christians), if they were to take 
a tour through the Southern States, to proselytize, and 
proclaimed that slavery was immoral in everybody, 
and ought to be abolished, I suppose no very remote 
experience would sufficiently show the precariousness 
of all “conjectures” as to the consequences. 

Mr. Newman says: “'The Romans practised fornica- 
tion at pleasure, and held it ridiculous to blame them. 
If Paul had claimed authority to hinder them, they 
might have been greatly exasperated; but they had not 
the least objection to his denouncing fornication as 
immoral to Christians. Why not slavery also?” * 
There are no doubt false analogies and true analogies. 
Whether this is one or the other, we shall soon see. 
The question, I presume, is about denouncing slavery 
as a thing criminal in itself; not as an immorality to 
Christians only, but as wrong in anybody. Fornica- 
tion they did so denounce; it was an immorality, 
whether practised by Christians or any one else. Now 
the fallacy of any such analogy, when thus fairly stated, 
becomes clear from this argument, which is the counter- 
part of Mr. Newman’s. 

“'The Romans practised idolatry at pleasure, and 
thought it ridiculous to blame it. If Paul had claimed 
authority to hinder them, they might have been greatly 
‘exasperated.’ (I should think so.) But they had not 
the least objection to his denouncing idolatry as im- 


* Phases, p. 107. 


168 A DEFENCE OF “THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


moral to Christians, or to anybody; for thus he de- 
nounced fornication.” — Does it follow now that they 
would have no objection? Let his own history, let the 
thousands of martyrs who, before long, died because 
they would not burn incense on heathen altars, answer 
the question! 

As to whether Christianity is or is not unfavorable 
to slavery, I am quite willing, as before, to remit the 
decision to the practical test. I defy any man to dis- 
cover, in any age, or in any nation, any considerable 
body of men who breathed a word of disapprobation 
of slavery as such, till Christianity came into the 
world; nor then, except amongst those nations that 
have been brought into contact with it. The apathy of 
all the nations of antiquity, and all nations not Chris- 
tian at the present day, — the utter unconsciousness of 
the best moralists of antiquity of their being any 
harm in slavery,— confirms the conclusion that the origi- 
nation of right sentiments on this subject has been the 
work of Christianity. Nothing really avails against 
this gigantic evil, except the influences that have 
abolished both the slave-trade and slavery amongst 
ourselves; that is, a deep persuasion that slavery is 
utterly opposed, if not to the letter, yet to the entire 
spirit of Christianity, and that it and the Gospel can- 
not coexist in perpetuity. It may last long, for human 
cupidity is not more easily subdued than slavery; but 
where Christianity enters, the fray is sure to begin, and 
will never terminate but with the extinction of slavery 
itself. Since “The Eclipse of Faith” was first pub- 
lished, there has appeared among us a book which has 
done more to awaken the hatred of the world against 
slavery than perhaps anything that was ever written 
before, or is likely to be soon written again. Now 
what was it, after all, that gave to its exposure of the 


EARLY PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 169 


evils of slavery such intense interest, and so deeply 
stirred the heart of America and of Europe as they 
read? What was it but the Christian sentiment which 
inspired it? What was it but the bond which was felt 
to connect poor Uncle Tom and the little Eva with Him 
‘whose love knows no distinction of color; who wel- 
comes both alike to His feet, and in whom “all the 
families of the earth are to be blessed” ; who came to 
open “the prison doors to them that are bound”; and 
even where He does not do that literally, yet can en- 
franchise degraded humanity with a freedom so much 
more glorious, that it must make the cheek of every 
conscientious Christian tingle to think that any inferior 
freedom should be withheld? Let our philanthropic 
Deists write a book which, freely resorting to their 
sources of interest, — to the abstract rights of man, — 
shall produce half the same effect which this does by 
combining with all such topics (which are equally 
those of both parties) the nobler sentiments which 
Christian philanthropy alone can inspire. 


And now as to the “early progress of Christianity.” 
Mr. Newman had represented the Christians, previous 
to the age of Constantine, as a “small fraction”; and 
yet declared that it was the Christian soldiers of Con- 
stantine who conquered the empire for Christianity. 
If all the Christians in the empire were but a small 
fraction, those in the army — considering that it was 
not a very likely place for the primitive Christians to 
harbor in—must have been a very small fraction of 
a “small fraction”; and the question returns, how it 
came to pass that a small fraction of a “small frac- 
tion” managed to conquer the colossal strength of a 
hostile or indifferent empire for Christianity. 

Mr. Newman, omitting this part of the subject, —it 


170. A DEFENCE OF “* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


was as well omitted, — affirms, as usual, that I have 
misrepresented him, and thus he endeavors to show 
it: “The Author of ‘The Eclipse of Faith’ has de- 
rided me for despatching, in two paragraphs, what oc- 
cupied Gibbon’s whole fifteenth chapter; but this au- 
thor, here as always, misrepresents me. Gibbon is ex- 
hibiting and developing the deep-seated causes of the 
spread of Christianity before Constantine; and he by 
no means exhausts the subject. JI am comparing the 
ostensible and notorious facts concerning the outward 
conquest of Christianity with those of other religions.” * 

I consider that in this very paragraph Mr. Newman 
distinctly shows that I have not misrepresented him ; 
nor is it true, that I have overlooked his novel hypoth- 
esis. He says that “ Gibbon is exhibiting and devel- 
oping the deep-seated causes of the spread of Chris- 
tianity before Constantine,’ — which Mr. Newman 
says had not spread! On the contrary, he assumes 
that the Christians were a “small fraction,’ and thus 
does dismiss in two sentences, I might have said three 
words, what Gibbon had strained every nerve in his’ 
celebrated chapter to account for. As to Gibbon’s not 
“exhausting ” the subject, I have here the happiness of 
entirely agreeing for once with Mr. Newman; though, 
if Mr. Newman’s view of the early condition of Chris- 
tianity be correct, I should have thought he would more 
likely have said that Gibbon more than exhausts it. 

In relation to Mr. Newman’s hypothesis, the ques- 
tion still returns, — supposing the Christians in the 
time of Constantine a small fraction, and the soldiers a 
small fraction of that,— how Constantine came to be - 
fool enough to endanger his cause by implicating it 
with their own, and they heroes enough to conquer the 


* Phases, p. 101. 


EARLY PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 171 


empire for him and themselves; especially since Julian 
would undoubtedly have liked to reverse the trick, and 
very signally failed ? 

Mr. Newman has added a little and altered a little 
in his statements on this subject in his present edition, 
but, as in so many other cases, manages to assume 
what ought to be proved. He says, after repeating that 
the Christians were but a small fraction of the empire, 
that “ Christianity was adopted as a state religion be- 
cause of the great political power accruing from the 
organization of the churches, and the devotion of 
Christians to their ecclesiastical citizenship.” If they 
had not been a small fraction, we should still, of course, 
have demanded something more than this free and 
easy way of disposing of this matter; for the bare as- 
sertion of such a critic as Mr. Newman will hardly 
pass without proof; as also how it was that such or- 
ganization as the primitive churches could be so ob- 
viously suited to political and military purposes. But 
since they were a “small fraction” of the empire, it is 
still less obvious how a great political power could 
suddenly “accrue from their-Church organization.” 

In the same passage, Mr. Newman says, “ The brav- 
ery and faithful attachment of Christian regimemts” — ° 
who would not have thought that it was one of Con- 
stantine’s aides-de-camp that was speaking? — “was a 
lesson not lost on Constantine”; but how there came 
to be “ Christian regiments,” when all the Christians in 
the empire were “a small fraction,” and the camp about 
the last place wherein to seek them, is, as before, the 
main question. 


172 A DEFENCE OF ** THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


PHRCTION ALY. 


SOME MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 


Nor to omit anything, however incidental, which 
Mr. Newman has said in reply to “'The Kclipse,’” 
I will make a remark or two on a note* in which he 
evidently refers to the work, though he does not name 
it. Mr. Newman had admitted in his “Phases” the 
“very complete establishment which Paley’s ‘ Hore 
Pauline’ gives to the narrative concerning Paul in the 
latter half” of the “ Acts,’ and which appeared to him 
“to reflect critical honor on the whole New Testa- 
ment.” The Author of “The Eclipse of Faith” says 
(“Dilemmas of an Infidel Neophyte”), that, on re- 
nouncing Christianity, Mr. Newman does not attempt 
to account for this, “as he surely ought.” Mr. New- 
man cannot see that he has to account for anything! 
He says, in his recent edition, “ A critic absurdly com- 
plains that I do not account for this.’ Ido not “ ab- 
surdly ” complain that he does not account for it, be- 
cause lam perfectly well aware that it is impossible 
for him to do so. But I; not absurdly, complain that, 
admitting the facts, he does not attempt to account for 
them. He says, “ Account for what? I still hold the 
authenticity of nearly all the Pauline Epistles, and that 
the Pauline Acts” — we see how fine his criticism can 
cut, but no reasons given — “are compiled from some 
valuable source, — from chap. -xil. onward; but it was 


* Phases, p. 14. 


> re a 


Ate, 


SOME MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 173 


gratuitous to infer that this could accredit the Four 
Gospels.” Precipitate again. It is “gratuitous” of 
him to suppose that I was saying “that the coinci- 
dences could accredit the Four Gospels,” though I 
think they will indirectly go a great way towards that ; 
but it does not follow that, if they do not accredit the 
Four Gospels, there is not still something to be ac- 
counted for. Supposing, as this admission does, the 
‘Pauline Epistles to have been written under the cir- 
cumstances related in the “ Acts,” it is natural that he 
who rejects Christianity should seek to give some - 
plausible account at least of the ready reception of 
Paul’s extraordinary pretensions in so many widely 
different communities,—an explanation especially, not 
simply of his preternatural claims, but of such a prompt 
submission to them ;— to let us know whether he was 
a fanatic or an impostor;—how, if the latter, he 
“managed ‘to hoodwink the people, and how, if the 
former, they managed to hoodwink. themselves ;— how ° 
it was that they contrived to surrender at so early a 
period, and in so many distant places, their various 
national and local prejudices in favor of these novel 
and (if false) not very attractive extravagances. I 
rather think that most people will think there is some- 
_ thing to be accounted for, if a man admits what Mr. 
Newman admits, and yet rejects the miraculous origin 
of the Gospel. In the mean time, and since Mr. New- 
man thinks any inference in favor of Christianity from 
such a source so precarious, I recommend him to do 
what Johnson said had never been done nor was likely 
to be done,—refute Lord Lyttelton’s argument for 
Christianity from the life and labors of Paul, or the 
inferences which Paley so forcibly draws, at the close 
of the “ Horee Pauline,” from the historical facts there 
aa to the preternatural origin of Christianity. 
22 


» 


174 A DEFENCE OF *“* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


In general, it may be remarked of that singular book, 
the “ Phases,” that ordinarily such is the oblivion of all 
that does not make for a present assertion, or of almost 
all that makes against it, that an amusing book might 
be written by reversing the whole process of the 
“ Phases,” and supplying the evidence omitted from 
point to point. For example: Mr. Newman proposes 
to get rid of the testimony of Peter. to the Resurrec- 
tion. He has already successfully eliminated that of 
Paul, John, and others, by processes equally summary. 
Well, and how does he get rid of Peter? Nothing 
more easy: —“ Peter does not attest the bodily, but 
only the spiritual resurrection of Jesus, for he says that 
Christ was ‘put to death in flesh, but made alive in 
spirit.’ (1 Peter ii. 18.) Yet if this verse had been 
lost, his opening address (i. 3) would have seduced one 
into the belief that Peter taught the bodily resurrection 
of Jesus.” 

Let us suppose —if we can suppose — some disci- 
ple of Mr. Newman acquiescing in this view, till he 
came to look a little into the evidence here quietly ig- 
nored. I fancy he would say, “ Manifestly, I had no 
right to assume that 1 Peter i. 3, which asserts the fact 
of Christ’s resurrection with such literal plainness, was 
not to be so interpreted, because there was another | 


passage the meaning of which was disputed. Was — 


not this to interpret the plain by the obscure? And 
then, again, it was clear that I had overlooked other 
passages, which, like i. 3, spoke as plainly of the resur- 
rection, —as, for example, ili. 21. What right had I 
to say that these plainer texts were to go for nothing, 
and be interpreted by the more obscure? And, after 
all, even that obscure verse, — what could be made of 


* Phases, p. 123, 2d ed. 


~ = ge \ ss Newttre« ie 


SOME MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 175 


it but the bodily resurrection? And though I once 
believed Mr. Newman, that the ‘received version’ was 
‘barely possible,’ yet I now see, in fact, that there is a 
respectable weight of evidence in favor of it. And 
whether there be or not, what can be meant by Peter’s 
testifying to Christ’s ‘spiritual resurrection’? Clearly, 
it was the greatest extravagance to suppose that Peter 
believed the soul of Christ had died, and yet how else 
could it have been ‘raised’? Again: I saw that the 
whole language of the New Testament so plainly im- 
plies that the bodily resurrection of Christ was really 
believed in and affirmed, — whether truly or falsely, — 
that it was mere interpreting for the nonce to suppose 
Peter an exception, and to mean something totally dif- 
ferent. And then, how was it possible to dispose of 
those passages in Peter’s address on the day of Pente- 
cost, in which he affirms so expressly Christ’s bodily 
resurrection? and again, at the choice of the new - 
Apostle, when Peter expressly says that the choice 
must be from among those who ‘had companied with 
Jesus, and could ‘bear witness to his resurrection’? 
Yet Mr. Newman does not even mention these facts ; 
and if he says the first part of the Acts is spurious, 
still he should have shown it. Manifestly, to write in 
this way is not to ‘investigate evidence.’ ” 


176 A DEFENCE OF “* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


SECTION XV. 
A FEW WORDS TO A PROSPECTIVE REVIEWER. 


I must make a little pause here, just to bestow a 
brief notice on a critic in the last number of the “ Pros- 
pective Review,” the organ, I believe, of what may be 
called the extreme Unitarian school; I suppose there 
can be little doubt about the atthoehin The style 
would betray it, even if the article were not a pro- 
fessed defence of “The Moral Perfection of Christ” 
against the special criticisms of Mr. Newman. But 
as the critic has not revealed his name, it shall be un- 
- mentioned here. In the prelude to that article, the 
writer is pleased to express himself “greatly delighted” 
at the “Reply” to “The Eclipse of Faith”; though 
one would have thouglit that his reason and his taste 
would have been a little startled by those curious dis- 
plays of logic and rhetoric which adorn that singular 
performance. But I do not complain of this; every 
man to his taste: De gustibus, and so forth. But what 
I think I may complain of is, that this critic, though 
stultifying a previous decision of the journal in which 


he writes, declares that the Author of “The Eclipse gato 


“has thrown his whole force of thought,— all the 
power of exposition, argument, and sarcasm,” (for 
which the critic is pleased to give him credit,) — “in 
spite of himself, into the irreligious scale”! In the 
next sentence he forgets even that qualification, and 
professes to be in doubt whether “ The Eclipse” might 
not have come from the “ oficina of Atheism,” whether 


ae ee a 


A PROSPECTIVE REVIEWER. 177 


“it was written in good faith,” or whether it “ be not 
rather a covert attack on all religion”! Is it possible, 
I am ready to ask, that the critic can have read one 
tenth of the book, to have really any doubts about the 
intentions of the author, whatever he may have about 
his ability to second those intentions? Did not the 
very journal in which the critic writes declare, only a 
year or so ago, that the work had its value, specially 
as a protest against some of Mr. Newman’s one-sided 
views; that it was calculated to give “pause and 
check to many a flashy young man,’ and this was. 
probably the “worthy and pious” purpose of the 
author? Were not special commendations bestowed 
on the protest against Mr. Newman’s views of Christ, 
which it is the very object of this critic to explode ? * 
The suspicions of the critic offer a tempting theme 
for the exercise of those same powers of sarcasm for 
which he gives me credit, if I were disposed to use 
them ;— which I will use, however, but sparingly, for 
the reasons I shall presently assign. It seems almost 
incredible that he can really mean what he says, and 
unsay all that his own journal has said. I can make 
allowance for a little sensitiveness at the dilemmas in 
Harrington’s sceptical discussion, demanding, as they 
do, an answer from one who, on such questions, practi- 
cally espouses the Deist’s cause; I can sympathize 
with the natural wish to pay a little compliment to his 
friend Mr. Newman, whom he is just under the cruel 
necessity of opposing; I can indulge even the little 
flourish of “self-deceiving partiality,’ which permits 


* The obverse and reverse of this critical medal would furnish curious 
contrasts ; but itis hardly worth while to cite passages. The articles will 
be found in the numbers for August, 1852, and November, 1853. The 
motto of the Review is, “ Respice, Aspice, Prospice.” ‘Phe editor seems: 
for a moment to have forgotten the first word of the three. 

2a 


178 A DEFENCE OF *‘ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.’ 


him to say, in one and the same breath, “ How is it 
that these same powerful instruments” (which have so 
demolished “ The Eclipse of Faith” ), “ when wielded 
in a different cause, and directed against ourselves, 
appear to us to beat the air, we really cannot tell.” I 
can less understand how it is that, just as he is about 
to show, on one of the most testing questions which 
~ can exercise the intellect and the heart of man, that 
either himself or Mr. Newman must be a very baby in 
critical discernment, — one believing in the absolute 
moral perfection of Christ, and the other, that he was 
not only “encompassed with our infirmities,” but “ far 
below vast numbers of his unhonored disciples,’ — he 
should select, just that moment to profess “a profound 
deference for Mr. Newman’s moral and historical judg- 
ments”! Pity his friend, love him, wonder at him, ex- 
postulate with him, all that is intelligible; but only 
think, gentle reader, in such a case, of a “ profound 
deference for historical and moral judgments”! Who 
would not think now that it was Socrates, rather than 
Protagoras, that was speaking here, and that the critic 
was ironical in spite of himself? It is as if two men 
were looking at the sun: “Glorious orb!” says one, 
“ how every meaner light fades away before thy efful- 
gence! Who can confound thee with any other of the 
lamps of light?” “ Do you call that the sun?” cries 
the other; it is but a star of the tenth or twelfth mag- 
nitude. I see far brighter orbs than that.” “ My dear 
friend,” exclaims the first, “I have the profoundest 
deference for your powers of vision, but really 4 
But I will not go on. Isuppress the sarcasms which 
the suspicions of my “ Atheism” and the compli- 
ments to Mr. Newman’s “historical and moral judg- 
ments” would justify, for the sake of that effort which 
the critic has made, (though, as I think, on most pre- 


a ae Se ee 


A PROSPECTIVE REVIEWER. 179 


carious grounds, and from a most imperfect point of 
view,) to defend the moral excellence and perfection of 
Fim who is worthy of all love and veneration. The 
critic’s conclusion, indeed, may surprise us, but still he 
arrives atit. He abandons seemingly all that is preter- 
natural in Christianity, — he reduces most of its his- 
tory, all its miraculous history, to a caput mortuum of 
myth and fable,—he leaves us in utter doubt how 
many or how few of its facts we are to credit or reject, 
—he believes that the “ Messiah” himself was mis- 
taken in his own Messiahship,— he fancies that he 
knows more of Christianity, while he denies the integ- 
rity of the only records which inform us about it, than 
the Apostles themselves ; — in all this he fights his battle 
under grave disadvantages, and, in fact, reposes his be- 
lief in the “ moral perfection of Christ” solely on an ir- 
resistible feeling. Apart from that feeling (for which I 
yet cannot but honor him), he seems to vault upon air, 
or upon a rope so thin, that he seems to a spectator to 
do so; and as he trips about in the spangled dress of his 
somewhat too glittering rhetoric, it is impossible to re- 
strain the fear lest he and his thesis should together tum- 
ble to the ground. Still he has defended the thesis; he 
avows that he sees, as he looks on the face of Christ, 
the moral glory and grandeur which beam from thence, 
and has endeavored to shelter Him from the rude at- 
tack which the author of the “ Phases” has ventured 
to make upon Him. For that I will so far honor him, 
as to give him free leave to vent what suspicions he 
will of “my possible Atheism,” or my “ equivocal 
good faith.” If He, whom he strives on this occasion 
to defend, said that He would remember the most 
trivial act of kindness to the “least of those” whom 
He deigns to call “ His brethren,” surely His disciples 
may well forgive even a greater wrong to one who is 


180 A DEFENCE OF ‘*‘ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


endeavoring, though I sincerely believe most inade- 
quately, to defend His cause. I trust that this may 
convince the author of the critique, that “ The Eclipse 
of Faith” does not come from the “ Atheist’s work- 


shop,” or from one who writes with “bad faith.’ Or, ° 


if he still doubts it, and will attempt to justify his sus- 
picion, I pledge myself to examine whether his view or 
mine most naturally leads to religious scepticism ; also, 
whether it may not be possible to give his logic a little 
- more exercise in showing how, with his premises, he 
knows anything certain about Christ at all, or why His 
perfection as well as His miracles may not be a mere 
myth, than Mr. Newman has done by so feebly as- 
sailing the moral delineation of Him. I promise, how- 
ever, that I will not charge my critic, as he charges me, 
with “hastening with utmost glee to poison the foun- 
tains of natural piety, and relishing the sorrows of 
the believers whose dreams he strives to dissipate”! 
Such imputations should be left to those who have 
reached a downright, coarse, unmitigated Deism, and 
have snapped the last link which binds them in rever- 
ence to the moral loveliness he celebrates. Nay, I may 
even say they should be left to those who wield a less 
graceful pen than his; for good taste condemns them 
not less than good feeling. 


ee 


CONCLUSION. ~ 181 


SECTION XVI. 
CONCLUSION. 


Ar length, I have done with Mr. Newman; but I 
cannot resist the present opportunity of saying a few 
words to my young Christian contemporaries on what 
I deem the true position of the chief arguments on 
which they are generally invited to surrender their 
faith, as compared with those which support it; and 
on what, before surrendering it, they have a right to 
demand from those who seek to snatch that faith from 
them. 

At last, after much discussion in this and preceding 
ages, the world, I think and hope, is beginning to com- 
prehend that it is not sufficient to discredit Christian- 
ity, or indeed any other system, to propound plausible 
or even insoluble objections; since it is a sort of weap- 
on by which Atheism, Pantheism, and the half-score 
systems of Deism may be alike easily foiled. And if 
there is any theory of religion, which is not in the 
same predicament as Christianity, — nay, which is not 
exposed to yet greater objections, —I shall be glad to be 
informed of it. I can only say, it is a perfect novelty 
to me. Certainly it is not any of the theories of Deism, 
the pleasant varieties of which have sprung out of the 
very eagerness with which the advocates of each have 
sought to evade the difficulties which press the abettors 
of every. other. 

Encompassed on all sides by impassable barriers, in 
_ whatever direction we speculate,— and in none by 


182 A DEFENCE OF ** THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


loftier or more solid wall of rock than in metaphysical or 
moral philosophy, —we are not called upon to answer 
every objection which may be made to our tenets, — 
for that is impossible, whatever the hypothesis that 
may be adopted: the only real question is, on which 
side the greatest weight of positive evidence is found, 
and the least weight of opposing objections.* 
Christians believe that precisely one and the same 
principle applies both to the works and to the word of 
God. In the former, every phenomenon proves His 
power, — most of them His wisdom; and the more, the 
more they are examined. The vast preponderance of 
them also, both in the world of outward nature and in 
‘the internal world of consciousness, proclaims His good- 
ness. The Christian believes, therefore, that He has 
all these attributes;—the last happily confirmed to 
him by what he deems an express and authoritative 
revelation, which perhaps could alone, amidst the con- 
flicting facts of God’s present administration, prove to 
man’s tottering reason and feeble faith, that the Divine 
Goodness is Perfect and Infinite. But while on the 
above preponderance of evidence the Christian receives 
these cardinal truths, he also sees in the present condi- 
tion and the entire administration of this lower world 
much that is utterly incomprehensible; many things 
that God does, still more that He permits to be done, 
which he cannot harmonize with man’s “ little wis- 
dom” and “ little love”; though he believes they can 
be harmonized. He dares not make his judgment the 
measure of all that God can do in the rightful exercise 
of those infinite attributes of rectitude, wisdom, and 
benevolence, which on independent, and, as he -be- 


* See a striking admission of Hume (an unexceptionable witness here), 
and some admirable cautions of the sagacious Locke, in the Appendix. 


— Se 


Z CONCLUSION. 183 


lieves, irrefragable grounds, he ascribes to Him, The 
only answer that can in our present state — nay, per- 
haps in any state —be given to some questions which 
the finite may ask of the Infinite, is that with which 
God himself, when He “spake out of the whirlwind” 
to the patriarch, rebuked and silenced at once every 
mutter of discontent with which human pride and folly 
ventured to arraign Divine Wisdom and Beneficence. 
It was an appeal, not to a demonstration of Infinite 
Goodness, but to a Power and Wisdom which were 
visibly unlimited and incomprehensible: “ Where wast 
thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” 

The conditions of argument are similar in relation 
to Christianity. The Christian believes, from an im- 
mense variety, complexity, and convergence of proof, 
that the Book which contains it, and the system it re- 
veals, never came from man. Particular objections to 
portions of it, nevertheless, — both as respects doctrine 
and history, — may, like the correspondent difficulties 
in the outward universe, be attended with unanswer- 
able perplexities; but the Christian listens to them 
just as he would to a judge, who, in his summing up, 
tells the jury that there can be no doubt that the evi- 
dence — nine parts out of ten — will justify them in ° 
bringing in one, and only one verdict; though he says 
there may be one, two, or three points on which the 
evidence is conflicting, and on which neither himself 
nor mortal man can give, or even suggest, any plausible 
solution. 

To any such objections — the substantial points of the 
evidence remaining —the Christian feels himself en- 
titled to say, “Stand by; I cannot stop for you.” In 
relation to many of them, he may boldly say, when 
called to solve them, “I cannot; ‘lime may solve 
them, as I see it has solved many; and these, like 


184 A DEFENCE OF ** THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


those, may then be transferred to the other side of the 
account; but even now they cannot materially affect 
the columns which give the total.” And, in my judg- 
ment, it is in many cases not only wise to say this, but 
the only honest course. Much mischief has often been 
done by pretending to give a solution, which neither 
he who gives nor he who demands it feels to be suf- 
ficient. There is another thing, however, that can be 
done by the Christian; and that 1s to say, not only 
“the mass of the evidence justifies my belief in spite of 
these objections, but see how easily I can transfer the 
war. Come, answer a few of my objections” ; and if 
the opponent says, “ No, that is ‘dishonest,’” he can 
reply, “It is perfectly honest, and absolutely neces- 
sary too; for you do not wish me to believe nothing, | 
presume; you wish me to believe you! Do for me 
what you say I must do for you. Answer satisfacto- 
rily all the objections I put to you.” 

If that course be taken, I fearlessly say that the 
argument of “ objections,” which has always been the 
great weapon against Christianity, can be consistently 
employed only by him who would drive you to abso- 
lute scepticism: certainly not, as we have seen, by any 
- form of modern Deism. For how stands the argument 
on that side? 

Not only has Deism its insoluble objections, — and 
plenty of them too, — but, in all its forms, the main 
objections must remain the same in every.age; they 
are, in truth, insusceptible, in the nature of things, of 
any-alleviation. In rejecting all authoritative external 
revelation, Deism ipso facto proclaims itself incapable 
of giving any explanation of man’s chief perplexities, 
— perplexities which an external revelation alone can 
solve ;— those connected with the original condition of 
man, his present position relatively to the Deity, and 


CONCLUSION. 185 


his future destinies. On these Deism has a score of 
discordant theories; and not a few in relation to the 
character of the Deity himself, and even as to the 
grounds and limits of human duty! 

It is in vain to say that the bulk of mankind are in. 
capable of judging between the claims of Christianity 
and opposing systems; because, if it be meant that 
only a segment of its evidences can be made clear to 
the common people, it is equally true of other subjects 
in which man is imperatively required to take a part; 
as is distinctly shown in “The Eclipse of Faith.” * 
Lhe lawyer, the statesman, the physician, the political 
economist, much more the common people, are com- 
pelled, in a thousand cases, to act on an imperfect 
knowledge, and in a great number of cases on very 
much less evidence than that which even the mass of 
the people may comprehend in relation to the claims 
of Christianity. So far as it is an objection, therefore, 
it does not apply to Christianity merely, but to the 
entire constitution of the world and of human nature ; 
and applies, moreover, in full force, to the theories 
which it is proposed to substitute in its place. Do 
men dispute less about them? Let the history of the 
ever-varying theories of Deism, and those of Panthe- 
ism, Atheism, and Secularism answer. And even if 
men be resolved, because there are these difficulties 
everywhere, to have no religion at all, they do not es- 
cape similar dilemmas, or rather, they double them: 
not to mention, that it will not avail one in a million ; 
for if the facts of all history prove any one thing, it is 
that man is so constituted that he will have some rec 
ligion, and the only question is what. 

The helpless condition of Deism, in its many forms, 
Se eee et ae oc! TN rs eee ee ETS 


* Keclipse of Faith, pp. 325 - 329. 
23 


186 A DEFENCE OF “* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


we have already seen in the fourth section; its inco- 
herent gabble or its dread silence on those problems in 
which man feels he must have something other than 
ever-varying guesses or mysterious shakes of the head; 
and its endless discords, even in the little sphere in 
which it professedly dogmatizes. It is simply destruc- 
tive ; it constructs nothing; its promises, indeed, are 
large, but it never fulfils them. It is always just going 
to prove; always in the paulo-post future tense. Mean- 
time, it contents itself with the more easy task of 
Jaughing at and deriding the attempts of Christianity _ 
to do what it leaves undone. It has only two faults, 
as some one said to the man who wished to borrow 
his donkey, —“ He is very hard-to be caught, and 
when you have caught him, why—he is good for 
nothing.” 

Before the young Christian yields to those who sum- 
mon him to surrender his faith, I think he is justified 
in asking a proof (the more rigid that they renounce 
all authority) of some one of those many theories of 
God, man, and the universe, which they propose for 
his acceptance. ~ In default of that, — and J think it 
will be long before he will get it,~—the Christian, pre- 
vious to being reduced even to a preliminary scepti- 
cism, may fairly demand a demonstration of those prin- 
ciples by which so many modern Deists attempt sum- 
marily to set aside the claims of Christianity. 

For example: it is confidently proclaimed by many 
of them that a miratle is impossible; this is*proved, in 
the progress of modern science, so they say. Strauss 
avowedly, and very many modern opponents of Chris- 
tianity tacitly, assume this principle; that is, they re- 
duce everything to the uniformities of present experi- 
ence, and then decide, of course easily. enough, that 
what ex professo presents phenomena at variance with 


CONCLUSION. 187 


that experience is to be rejected. Having laid it down 
as an axiom, that a miracle is impossible, Christianity, 
of course, must be false; and the only wonder is, that 
anybody who believes this should enter into criticism 
at all to refute its historic claims, or to prove that what 
was impossible per se was not very probable in any 
other way. 

It is in vain to reason in this way until the impossi- 
bility of miracles, which is so often assumed, has been 
distinctly proved ; and then, no doubt, Strauss and his 
followers may dispense with every other argument alto- 
gether. But then it is well to remind the Deist that 
when it 7s proved that we must take the uniformities 
of present experience as an invariable standard ; — that 
we must assume that nature never varies, never has 
varied, never will vary beyond the limits of present 
experience ;— that the antecedents and consequents 
we see now have always followed, and will always 
follow, one another ;— I say it is well to remind him 
then that the inferences Harrington points out in the 
discussion on “ Miracles ”* fairly open on us; that the 
originatign of the present system, or, in fact, any con- 
dition of things at variance with our present experience, 
becomes an absurdity. LEvery immediately preceding 
generation-- the men of yesterday, the day before 
that, and so on, ad infinitum —have as much reason 
to argue in the same manner as we do; and there is 
left nothing for us but a blank Atheism or an equally 
blank Pantheism, “ with an eternal recurrence of simi- 
lar phenomena or an eternal succession of finite cycles 
of similar phenomena.” If these, and such like conse- 
quences, follow not, I invite the Deist to a refutation 
of Harrington’s conclusions on the supposition of the 
impossibility of miracles. 


> 


* Eclipse, Miraeles, pp. 246 — 283. 


188 A DEFENCE OF ‘*‘ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


But the whole reasoning of those who thus appeal 
to present uniform experience is really one of those 
fallacies against which Bacon cautioned the world so 
many years ago; and the philosophers who urge it 
belong to that class wko, as Socrates says, “will not 
believe anything but what they can see with their own 
eyes or press between their fingers.” A severe exami- 
nation of whatever is at variance with the inductions 
of a wide present experience, a rigid sifting of the 
evidence, is no doubt necessary; but to decide, abso- 
lutely and @ priori, that that cannot be true which is 
not conformable to it, so far from being worthy of the 
Baconian philosophy, is worthy only of those New 
Zealand philosophers who, when their countryman, 
Duaterra, having visited England, told them that the 
Europeans had quadrupeds so large that they could 
carry a man enormous distances in a day, and with 
incredible swiftness, unanimously voted him a liar. 
They had never seen an animal larger than a pig, — 
that was the “uniformity” of their experience, — and 
hence their hasty inference ; some “ put their fingers in 
their ears and begged he would let them hearno more 
of his lies”; others — experimental philosophers, no 
doubt — gave a very satisfactory proof that the infor- 
mant lied, by attempting to ride the said pigs, and, as 
they rolled off upon the sand, asked “how it was pos- 
sible to believe what was so plainly contrary to all ex- 
perience.” There, reader, in the New Zealand savage, 
rolling off his pig, you have a lively image of him who 
argues that a miracle is impossible, because he avows, 
that, in the whole circle of his very wide experience, 
and in the whole course of his butterfly existence, he 
really never saw one! Of course the answer is, “ My 
friend, I really never said you had.” All ages and the 
wide universe become to these philosophers just what 


7 
4 


CONCLUSION. 189 


his little island and his pigs were to the ignorant sav- 
age. 

Again, some folks tell us that an external authorita- 
tive revelation of moral and spiritual truth from God is 
impossible to man. I do not scruple to call it, after the 
reasonings both in “The Kclipse of Faith” and the 
present volume, one of the shallowest theories Which a 
‘Shallow metaphysics ever attempted to impose on man- 
kind. But, at all events, the Christian, before he re- 
nounces his faith on any such 4 priori theory is at 
least justified in demanding a rigid demonstration of it. 

Similarly, he is often told that prophecy is incred- 
ible; and that if a prophecy seem to be minutely ac- 
cordant with the facts it predicts, that is itself proof 
_ that it was composed after the event, and is history 
and not prophecy! Strauss applies this canon without 
a thought of proving it: and Mr. Newman often fol- 
lows him.* Of course it is easy to prove anything at 
this rate, for the critic cannot miss his conclusion; if 
God has given a prophecy, it will be of course ful- 
filled; and then if it has been fulfilled, it is ipso facto 
proof that it could not have been prophecy! so that 
God will have confuted the prophecy by literally ful- 
filling it! 

Now I say that the Christian is warranted in de- 
manding, not a free and easy assumption of these 
“high @ priort” methods of confuting the claims of 
Christianity, but a rigid proof of them. Let them be 
proved, and it will be unnecessary to say another word 
on the subject; and the only wonder is, that authors 
like Strauss should have thought it worth while to 
write a syllable, with such postulata, except to prove 
them. Instead of that, they assume them, and then, 


* Phases, pp. 180, 13], 2d ed. 
5 


190 A DEFENCE OF *¢ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


of course, easily prove that*miracles and prophecy are 
incredible, — for they are incredible ; — God, it appears, 
having established Perso-Median laws of the universe, 
the first of which is, that it is illegal for Him ever after 
to have anything to do with them! The Christian is 
justified in demanding, for any such assumptions, not 
conjectures nor dogmatism, but the most severe proof. 
There is a third thing which the Christian is justified 
in demanding of those who summon him to surrender 
his faith; but a word or two first. He will often be 
told in these days of the “ unmanageable and intract- 
able” character of the Christian evidences. Now he 
must not forget the still more “ unmanageable and in- 
tractable character” of the hopelessly discordant. the- 
ories which he is so pleasantly invited to choose 
amongst instead of Christianity; nor that man, on a 
thousand subjects, may have suflicient evidence to de- 
termine him, though it will vary much in different in- 
dividuals, and be comparatively superficial even in the 
most profound. It is just so with the Christian evi- 
dences; they are varied gnd complicated, and deep 
enough to engage and reward the efforts of the most 
comprehensive and the subtlest mind; and’ they often 
have done so. They are also simple enough, as re- 
gards their great outlines, to satisfy every man that 
investigates them with sincerity. The little tract of 
Whately, on the Christian Evidences, contains enough 
within its paper covers to bafile the efforts of Infidelity ; 
for it states the great facts on which Christianity has 
been, and is, received in the world. But the point to 
which I wish to call attention is this,— that, at all 
events, the Christian is justified in asking a sufficient 
— at least a plausible — account of the origin and suc- 
cess of Christianity from those who impugn it. How — 
little they are likely to give that, considering the ludi- 


CONCLUSION. 191 


crous contradictions and the self-refutative character of 
the hypotheses which have been hitherto invented, may 
be seen by any one who will read “ The Dilemmas of 
an Infidel Neophyte” in “ The Eclipse of Faith.” 

The position of Christianity, in relation to the objec- 
tions that may be urged against it, is very different 
from that of all the forms of Deism. Not only has it 
always its mass of positive evidence to appeal to, but 
that evidence is ever accumulating. 

Nor will the young Christian hesitate, if wise, to 
draw from the past a happy augury for the future, and 
sustain his faith by the omens derived from the failure 
of so many predictions of Infidelity. Whether the 
Scripture prophecies be true or not, certainly the pre- 
dictions of cur opponents have been false. We hear no 
more of many of the objections which towards the 
middle and close of the last century were so prema- 
turely urged against the truth of the Bible. We hear 
little now of the inferences from the prodigious astro- 
nomical cycles of India or China, the immense an- 
tiquity of Egyptian dynasties, the clear confutations of 
the Bible which lurked in yet undeciphered hieroglyph- 
ics! Enough has been disproved to show the precari- 
ous nature of such hasty theories, while many of the 
assumed facts, being found to be utterly false, are 
already transferred to the other side of the leger. Sim- 
ilarly the history of the New Testament —the Acts 
especially — has been found to be more accurate in 
proportion as the records of classic antiquity have been 
more diligently studied, or new fragments of them re- 
covered. God seems to be even now enabling us to 
throw fresh lights on the history of the Old ‘Testament, 
by unlocking the archives of 'Time, and revealing docu- 
ments on stone and marble, deposited, more securely 
than those in any museums, in the mounds of ancient 


192 A DEFENCE OF “*THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


Nineveh. Nor need we doubt that many of the lost 
fragments of more perishable human records may yet 
be dragged from secure lurking-places where God has 
hidden them, to silence for ever many controversies, 
which have filled volumes with conjecture and fable. 
The facts hich appear to have been destroyed by 
Time, Time may effectually restore. ‘The convulsions 
which covered Herculaneum and Pompeii, and seemed. 
to entomb so many glories of ancient art, and destroy 
so many records of ancient history, did, in fact, but 
embalm them. They were buried only to be restored 
by a glorious resurrection. 

It is most instructive to consider how many predic- 
tions of the enemies of Christianity, between Julian 
and Strauss, have ignominiously failed. ‘Take, for ex- 
ample, the boasted historic discrepancies and asserted 
“immoralities” to be found in the Bible. Many of 
them have been reiterated by all infidel writers from 
the earliest times till now. Many of them are just the 
same in the “ Phases” of Mr. Newman, in the “ Age 
of Reason” of Thomas Paine, in Bolingbroke, in Cel- 
sus. Asa fact, the objections do not prevail against 
the persuasion which the New Testament somehow in- 
spires, that it is history, and true history, not fiction 


nor a lie. “If the Bible,’ says Paine, “perish, from 
an exposure of the absurdities and errors which fill it, 
mind, it is not my fault.” Poor soul! —“’'T is sixty 


years since”; and in that time the Bible has found its 
way into scores of new languages and dialects of man, 
Christianity has dotted over the earth with its mission- 
ary stations, schools, and churches, and presents a pic- 
ture of unwonted activity of propagandism in nearly 
every community that professes it! | 

Since that time, the machinery of modern Missions 
and Bible Societies has been set in motion; since that 


a ” 


CONCLUSION. 193 


time, the family of nations professing Christianity have 
attained an enormous expansion of power and popula- 
tion, and are plainly destined to exercise a preponder- 
ant dominion in the earth; while even among these, 
those are far, far foremost in the race of science, wealth, 
commercial activity, which most reverence the statute- 
book of Christianity, and are most eager to promote 
her triumph; almost these alone now colonize, — their 
hives alone swarm.* Since that time the teeming mil- 
lions of India have been subjected to British sway and 
to British influence; and now the yet more populous 


** No doubt there are a multitude of causes which tend to produce differ- 
ences among nations ; but it is hardly possible for an inductive philosopher 
to ponder the facts above mentioned without suspecting that Christianity 
has some vital connection with them. Either she tends, by her direct and 
indirect influence, to create and evolve the elements of national activity 
and greatness, or receives them by donation from Heaven for some pur- 
poses subsidiary to her designs. The Christian will have little difficulty in 
believing both; that, if loved and cherished, she will create power and is 
dowered with it; nor, if her claims be well founded, is it wonderful that 
those nations which, in any tolerable measure, use their energies and de- 
vote their hearts to her enterprise, should be permitted to 


“Share the triumph and partake the gale.” 


But it is the easiest thing in the world (though the experiment may be 
a costly one) for Englishmen to bring the matter to a tolerable test. All 
they have to do is to be persuaded by our modern infidels to abandon 
Christianity, and suffer its institutions to go to decay; to shut up churches, 
chapels, and Sunday schools® demolish Bible societies and missionary 
societies ; substitute for the Bible one or other or a dozen of the panaceas 
which philosophic quackery is ever providing for the regeneration of the, 
world, and especially that ludigrous thing called “ Secularism,” — which 
promises us the annihilation of the Deity, and the apotheosis of man; or 
rather, the extinction of one infinite God, and the creation of eight hundred 
millions of petty impotent “divinities” instead ! England, at least, may 
then soon learn whether or not there be any vital connection between 
Christianity and national prosperity; and whether, in abjuring the Bible, 
her best bower anchor has not parted. Lamentable as the result of such 
an experiment might be, it might possibly be as instructive to the world as 
her past history. But Heaven grant that she may never be fool enough to 


try it! 


/ 


194 A DEFENCE OF ** THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


China* is opening its jealous gates to the incursions 
of advancing Christendom. Never did Infidelity choose 
a more luckless moment for uttering its prediction, 
that poor Christianity is about to die; never was there 
a moment when its disciples could more confidently 
repeat the invocation of the sublimest genius that ever 
consecrated itself to sacred song, when, celebrating the 
events of his time, he “snatched up an ungarnished 
present of thank offering” before he took his “ harp, 
and sang his elaborate song to generations” :—“ Come 
forth from thy royal chambers, O prince of all the kings 
of the earth! put on the visible robes of thy imperial 
majesty; take up that unlimited sceptre which thy 
Almighty Father hath bequeathed thee; for now the 
voice of thy bride calls thee, and all creatures sigh to 
be renewed!” 

Sixty years before Tom Paine, Bolingbroke and so 
many more had reiterated the very same historic and 
“moral” objections, and predicted that belief in the 
Old and New Testament could not resist the effects of 
eg a ec ee ee ee 


%* Jt is too early for a sober man to speculate about the stupendous revo- 
lution in China, its character, or its results. Iam stating facts, and wish 
to keep them. But at all events we see thus much, — that almost without 
human effort, in comparison with the effects, this mysterious Book — 
coming into most partial contact with the enerable’ and seemingly im- 
pregnable superstitions of China, and subjected, as might be expected, to 
all sorts of corruptions by the contact —has had no inconsiderable share 
in producing the most wonderful revolution the world has yet seen, — in 
shaking and rocking that empire whiche was apparently “barred and 
bolted” for ever against all external influence; to whose apparently in- 
vincible and immutable prejudices, enshrined in the mysterious hieroglyph- 
ics of an almost inaccessible language, Infidelity had so often pointed as 
laughing to scorn the efforts of Christianity! Mingled with much folly, 
wickedness, and superstition the emancipation of three hundred and forty 
millions from the deepest idolatry and debasement must needs be ; but 
the fact remains, that this ancient empire is shaken, and that the Bible 
(however imperfectly known) has been a most efficient instrument in the 
change. 


ee ee ee ne 


CONCLUSION, 195 


the revival: of literature and the progress of science. 
How readily such ratiocinations may be set aside, even 
by a sceptic, may be easily shown in the following lit- 
tle dialogue, where the reader may perhaps recognize 
the traces of an old acquaintance. 

“ May I ask to look into your book ?” said a young 
man of about thirty years of age to a fellow-traveller 
who had just laid one down. 

“ Certainly,” said the other with a smile, handing to 
him an abridged edition of Strauss, which I understand 
has been rather widely circulated among the class of 
intelligent artisans. “It is a little book which will 
soon demolish Christianity. It shows, clear as the day, 
that the Gospels, instead of being fact, are full of con- 
tradictions; and no more worthy of being regarded as 

history than Mother Hubbard’s tale.” 
 enk'Phe young man looked indifferent, — perhaps felt 
so. The other went on. 

“It is a cheap edition of that immortal writer Strauss, 
who, at the early age of twenty-eight, exploded for ever 
the historical charactér of Christianity, which had so 
long imposed on the world.” 

The young man continued silent, but seemed a little 
amused. 

“ What do you say to that?” said the other. 

“ Why, Iwas only thinking,” replied the young man, 
witli an air of great simplicity, “if the Gospels are so 
full of contradictions as you say, that it is strange 
these should not have been pointed out long ago; and 
that it was left for the promising young gentleman of 
twenty-eight to discover them to the world, eighteen 
hundred years after they were written! What fools 
mankind must have been!” 

“ You are mistaken, my friend,” said the admirer of 
Strauss, who found the temptation to display a little 


196 A DEFENCE OF “‘ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


of his learning irresistible. “In the earliest ages, 
Celsus, Porphyry, and others” —the young man looked 
very ignorant of these learned names — “ pointed out 
many of these contradictions and discrepancies; many 
more were pointed out and insisted upon by the great 
- deistical writers of England,—by Bolingbroke and 
Tindal, and Toland and Collins, and many more; and 
again in France and Germany, by Voltaire, and Wie- 
land and Lessing. No, no: the contradictions were 
too palpable to be eighteen hundred years in being 
found out. It would be more correct to say, that 


many of them have been discovered and exposed for 


near eighteen hundred years.” 

The young man seemed overwhelmed with such a 
catalogue of great names. 

« Why,” continued the other, — flattering himself, I 
think, that he had made an impression by all this 
learning on his ignorant hearer, — “so little truth, sir, 
is there in your observation, that a celebrated French 
author, Quinet, has said that there is perhaps hardly 
a single objection in Strauss but what had been re- 
peatedly urged before; and if that is not literally true, 
it is certainly not far from the truth.” 

I was wondering whether the young man would see 
that our infidel friend was fast demolishing, in his 
eagerness to show his own erudition, the reputation of 
the “wonderful young man of eight-and-twenty,” and 
reducing him to a retailer of other men’s criticisms. 

But he took another and a more effectual way of 
retort. He said, with great simplicity, “ I do not doubt 
in the least, sir, that it is all just as you say; and 
therefore 1 conclude, from the argument with which 
you began, — namely, that, as the Gospels must be 
given up on the discovery of such notorious contradic- 
tions, and as you now say that they have been dis- 


* 


; " “ 
ei ae an 2h 
OO se oe Po eee 


ee a ee re 


CONCLUSION, 197 


covered for many hundreds of years, —I say, I con- 
clude that the Gospels were given up long ago, and 
have not been believed for many hundred years. I am 
sorry, however, upon my word, for the promising young 
man you mention. He had not, it seems, a fair chance 
of doing much; he has been saying, it appears, things 
which other people have said before him, and what you . 
say he will do must have been already done!” 

Our acquaintance looked a little perplexed, but he 
evidently began to think the chances of conversion di- 
minished, and that the young man was not such a 
simpleton as he had at first taken him for. 

“Why,” said he, “the exposures of the contradic- 
tions in the Gospels ought to have led mankind to re- 
ject them long ago,——no doubt of that; it is certain, 
however, that they have not rejected them.” 

“Ah!” then said the young man, “JI am afraid, if 
men have been such blockheads as to be imposed upon 
in spite of such clear proofs as you mentioned a little 
while ago, they will very likely be still imposed upon. 
Tam afraid the world is too great a fool to be mended 
by the promising ‘ young man of eight-and-twenty.’ ” 

“ And I tell you,” said the other, with some vehe- 
mence, “that Christianity, since .Strauss’s work, is not 
worth a hundred years’ purchase.” 

“Pray how long is it since this wonderful work was 
’ first published ?” 

“ Only five-and-twenty years ago,” said the other. 

“ About a quarter of the century is gone,” said the 
young man very quietly. “It is high time that Chris- 
tianity should look about it. But I do not see that the 
book has made much impression at present. I am 
afraid people will still be as stupid as they were in the 
days of those other gentlemen you mentioned, — Bo- 
lingbroke and the rest. I am almost afraid that you 

24 


198 A DEFENCE OF “ THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


must say, like the prophet, ‘ Who hath believed our 
report??? 

“ Nevertheless, you will see it is as I say.” 

« Well, ‘seeing is believing,” no doubt of that; and 
we shall see what we shall see: but it is clear you can- 
not trust to anything else than seeing ; for, as gentle- 
men of your opinion have been disappointed so often 
in past ages, and so many promises have come to 
nothing, owing to the wonderful stupidity of mankind, 
who will believe these Gospels in spite of ‘the contra- 
dictions they contain? — why, the same thing may oc- 
cur again for aught I can see.” 

“T only know,” said the other, “that the faith which 
Christians tell us they are to exercise in the ultimate 
triumphs of Christianity will be very necessary.” 

“ Both parties will require it,” said the young man 
with a half laugh. “If I may judge by the rate of 
your past success in disabusing mankind of their 
strange delusion, against which persecution and argu- 
ment, criticism and wit, have been so often used in 
vain, I think you will require at least as much ‘faith 
and patience’ as the Christian talks about. But you 
seem to have got the first, if the last will but hold out. 
I almost think,” he continued, “you will need an ex- 
hortation similar to that to the Christians to be ad- 
dressed to you, —‘ Therefore, beloved brethren, be ye 
steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work 
of? — Celsus, Bolingbroke, and Strauss;— only I fear 
it will end differently, —‘ forasmuch as your labor will 
always be’ in vain in the name of Celsus, Bolingbroke, 
and Strauss!” 

I found it difficult to keep my countenance at this 
solemn-counsel. 

« Never mind,” rejoined the other, “we shall have a 
good ally in the inconsistencies, and follies, and wick- 


CONCLUSION. 199 


edness of Christians themselves. They are always 
~ preaching the excellence of their ethical code, but they 
do not practise it overmuch.” | 

“There is something in that,” said his opponent. 
“ For my part, I have always considered the inconsist- 
encies of Christians themselves enough to ruin them.” 

The other seemed pleased with this admission, and 
went on in a hearty tirade against the inconsistencies 
of Christians. 

“ | agree with you, —I quite agree with you,” said 
the young man, with a smile. “ You can hardly say 
anything too strong of them in that respect.” 

The other, thus encouraged, proceeded to declare 
that the monstrous doctrines and abuses of the corrupt 

forms of Christianity were enough to ruin any cause. 

The other still assented. “But,” said he, “ they 
have not dissipated this illusion.” 

“ No,”- said the other; “but they pits to have 
done it. » 

“ Ah!” then replied his opponent, “I fear that, in- 
stead of giving legitimate hopes, the argument ought 
to have rather the contrary effect. You see how stupid 
mankind are! Not even what you so curiously call 
your best ally —that is, the vices and corruptions of 
distorted Christianity —can cure them. ‘There is more 
work, my good sir, for faith and patience. You ought 
to pray Heaven that they may not exemplify the a 
tues they profess to love; or else, having been, in fact, 
invincible even with rine follies and vices, your cause 
will be absolutely hopeless!” 

“ Joke on,” said the other, who did not much relish 
this turn; “ but it will all come in time, you will see.” 

“J doubt whether I shall live long enough,” inter- 
jected the sceptic. 

“ Why now,” resumed his antagonist, “they talk of 


200 A DEFENCE OF “THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


the Evidences, and such stuff. How can the common 
people judge of the Evidences ? — how can they enter , 
into the question of various readings, and Alexandrian 
and Vatican manuscripts, and Syrian, and Hebrew, 
and Greek criticism, and all that farrago of learned 
nonsense, which they are told establishes the truth of 
Christianity ? ” 

“JT dare say not,” said the other carelessly ; “I sup- 
pose they receive the results of the ‘learned’ investi- 
gations when they cannot follow them; but it is clear 
_ they do believe in spite of not being able to follow 
them, 

“ Ay,” replied the other, “ but when they come to 
understand that manuscripts are not to be trusted, or 
that the Greek won’t bear this, and the Hebrew won’t 
bear that; that there is one critic for this various read- 
ing, and another for that; that ” — 

“ How!” returned the sceptic, laughing ; “ you do not 
surely think they will be better able to understand 
learned refutations of nonsense than learned demonstra- 
tions of nonsense! Or does it seem to you that, if I can- 
not read Syriac or Greek when I am told that it means 
so and so, I can read it and understand it when Iam told 
that it does nof mean so and so? No, no; the ques- 
tion of the destruction of Christianity will not be de- 
cided by this ‘clishmaclaver’ of what, if unintelligible 
on the one side, must be to the mass equally unintel- 
ligible on the other. As far as these learned matters 
go, the bulk of the common people will be led by other | 
considerations ; by arguments they can appreciate ; and 
as regards what they do no¢ understand, they will be 
decided just as they now are and must be,—by the 
weight of authority derived from the presumed learn- 
ing, known zeal, and character of those who tell them 
that things are so and so. Besides, if this sort of argu- 


CONCLUSION. 201 


ment were sufficient, it ought to have exploded Chris- 
tianity centuries ago; for, by your own confession, 
there has been no lack of such topics. There has been 
enough of citation and counter-citation, manuscript 
against manuscript, and learned nonsense against yet 
more learned nonsense ; but you see it does not answer 
the purpose either with thousands of the learned or mil- 
lions of the ignorant. - No, no; but I could tell you 
how,” half sinking his voice to a whisper, “you may 
explode Christianity.” : 

The other became all attention. 

“'Try the positive side,” said he. “Construct some 
system better than the New Testament, and agree 
about it. Exemplify it far more perfectly than the in- 
consistent Christians have done. Let it be expressed, 
too, and illustrated in such forms,—so resplendent with 
genius, and so attractive with the graces of imagina- 
tion and sensibility,—that it shall throw into the shade 
those Gospels which, upon my word, are the things 
which principally do the mischief. Only be cautious,” 
continued he, with a slight smile; “if you appeal, as 
perhaps you must, to the creations of imagination, 
dowt do the thing so perfectly as to deceive the people 
into the belief that the embodiments of fiction are true 
history, as you believe to have been the case with the 
Evangelical narrations, — or the last error will be worse 
than the first!” : 

It is surprising how little of the sceptic’s arguments 

Christian could, in such a case, object to ; but, to be 
sure, it all depends on infidel premises, —the prophe- 
cies of the speedy destruction of Christianity! But I 
must not give any more of any such dialogues, or else, 
having been suspected of “ Paganism” by one, and 
half suspected of “ Atheism ” by a second, I shall per- 


haps be mistaken for a “sceptic” by a third. 
24* 


202 A DEFENCK OF *“* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.” 


This inveteracy of belief in what, if false, must be 
the most prodigious of all fables or falsehoods, does not 
cling to any other myth or lie. Niebuhr has not to do 
his work twice, —if indeed he ever had to do it once, 
as regards the pure fiction of the history he exploded. 
Whether any one really believed, for centuries before 
he wrote,,that Romulus was suckled by a wolf, and 
Numa met his divine Egeria in the sacred groves, may 
be questioned; but assuredly no one believes it now. 
Osiris and Isis, Jupiter and Juno, Venus and Bacchus, 
Thor and Odin, are killed but once; man looks con- 
temptuously on, and no man tries to save them. 
Myths innumerable have been scattered by advancing 
knowledge and civilization; they often yield even to 
external influences, never resist internal light. Yet 
these myths of the New Testament —it is strangely 
provoking! —are always being killed and always liv- 
ing again! Age after age, in the very bosom of €hris- 
tianity, adversaries appear who again and again repeat 
the same story of the same “historic incredibilities,” and 
make no progress. They are confronted by men fully 
their equals in all respects, who tell them that they are 
egregiously mistaken. Generation after generation of 
the opponents ‘of Christianity, with their books, go to 
the bottom and are forgotten, and men still obstinately 
believe the New Testament true, its miracles facts, 
and its doctrines divine! You will say, ‘ And have not 
their adversaries gone too?” Very likely; but that 
which the one attacked and the other defended re- 
mains; it still goes forth with its many voices in oe 
languages of the earth, “conquering and to conquer.” 
Nor can I forget that such is the interest attached to 
the’ Bible, that its defenders are often still read when 
its assailants are utterly forgotten. Butler and Paley, 


Watson and Chalmers still live, though Tindall and 


\ 


CONCLUSION. 203 


, Chubb and Thomas Paine rest undisturbed in their 
dust. “And will ‘The Eclipse’ not be forgotten 
too?” I fancy I hear the reader archly ask. To be sure, 
I answer, and welcome; but if it last as long as the 
“ Phases” — and it cannot well be more ephemeral — 
I shall be content. 

| almost wish that the Deistical literature was not so 
liopelessly covered with oblivion as it is; it would show 
how long, how often, and how passionately have been 
urged the greater part of those “historic and moral 
difficulties” which are so often paraded in our day, as 
if they were absolute novelties. 

Again: if the Christian is told, as he is very fre- 
quently told now-a-days (and especially by Mr. New- 
man), that our “logic” is inconsistent with the “ logic” 
of Apostles; and that unless we could renounce our 
“logic,” it is in vain to attempt to resuscitate their 
“ faith,” — he will do well to smile at such assumptions, 
and say that owr “logic” is that of Butler, Newton, 
Bacon, Clarke, Robert Hall, Paley, Chalmers, and a 
host more, who have not deemed the “logic” of « Apos- 
tolic times” incompatible with any “logic” of our 
own. As to this amusing presumption, he will be 
content to confront it with the immensé homage which 
minds of the first order have, not in barbarism, but 
amidst the highest culture, and in spite of the most 
strenuous opposition, deliberately paid, after the pro- 
foundest study, to the truth of Christianity. Again: 
should he — though I think he will hardly be troubled 
there —be challenged to surrender his faith on the 
ground of the superior practical results of some other 
system, he need not be afraid to appeal to that test. 
Grievous as are the inconsistencies of Christians, I 
may leave it to his own conscience to determine that 
question. In the tendency to produce individual hap- 


204 A DEFENCE OF “* THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”’ 


piness, social well-being, philanthropic activity, — in 
efforts to ameliorate the condition of man, to succor 
the distressed, to “ visit the fatherless and the widow,” 
to be “ eyes to the blind and feet to the lame,” to “take 
the wings of the morning and fly to the utterrmnost parts 
of the earth,’ in eager sympathy with the wretched 
outcasts of superstition whom no man but the Chris- 
tian cares for, —that faith is yet to be found which 
will at all sustain comparison with Christianity. 

Of all religions Christianity is that, and that alone, 
which never will let the world slumber. No form of it 
is so corrupt as not to have internal energy enough to 
send forth its emissaries to the ends of the earth; men 
who will endure all privations and bear all perils to per- 
suade the nations to embrace it. This, among many 
peculiarities which discriminate Christianity from other 
religions, is one of the most striking, and ought to ex- 
cite deep reflection. No other religious system mani- 
fests, or ever has manifested, this remarkable, this uni- 
form tendency. How would all Europe be astonished 
at the appearance of Mahometan Mollahs, or Hindoo 
Brahmins in London and Paris, sent to perswade us to 
embrace their religions. Not only have heathen relig- 
ions never done this; but the religion which cradled 
Christianity itself rather restrained than extended its 
benefits. Judaism received, but hardly welcomed, pros- 
elytes. Christianity, on the other hand, addresses all 
“ kindreds, people, nations, and tongues”; and has, in 
these our days especially, lifted up its voice in every 
clime, and is speaking the dialect of nearly every tribe 
of man. Nothing is more certain than that man will 
have some religion, and if none other makes conquests, 
and, as is too plain, Deism neither will nor can, it is 
tolerably certain that BnenaOy: whether true or false, 
is likely to reign. 


. CONCLUSION. 205 


And let us not forget what Christianity is now doing; 
it has (as just said) the power to do what no other re- 
ligion does, and what no form of Deism ever attempts 
to do ;—it has the power to render those who believe 
in it intensely anxious to make it triumphant; it sends 
its agents to the uttermost parts of the earth, and sup- 
ports them there. And, by doing so, it has reclaimed 
barbarous tribes to civilization, — abolished their idol- 
atry,—fixed their language, and given them the ele- 
ments of all art, literature, and civilization, in giving 
them the Brsux ; for in the very process of giving that, 
' it gives them all these also. Only the other day, many 
of us saw, from the remotest isles of Polynesia, a Sa- 
moan newspaper, printed entirely by a race who, only 
a few years ago, were a set of naked savages, addicted 
to cannibalism and infanticide, and without the ele- 
ments of a written language. The paper was printed 
in a style which (as an English printer truly said) 
would do no discredit to an English printing-office. 
Not only so; but the same Christianity has the power 
of immediately inspiring those who receive it again 
to aid in its further diffusion, and to hand on the bright 
torch which has kindled the hallowed fire on their own 
hearths and altars. Only last year, I observed that 
nearly a tenth of the large revenues of one of our mis- 
sionary societies was derived from the converts it had 
made, —from New-Zealanders, and Tahitians, and Hot- 
tentots, and Bechuanas; and other societies were aided 
from similar sources in a similar proportion! These 
simple facts are worth a thousand platform speeches. 
Let our Deistical “ magicians” do the like by their en- 
chantments. No, they can talk, and write (as Harring- 
ton says) “ book-revelations against book-revelation,” 
and dream their many-colored, ever-impracticable dreams 
of human regeneration, and that is all. Till Deism does 


206 A DEFENCE OF * THE ECLIPSE OF* FAITH.” 


something more, Christianity has not much to fear 


from it. 


And now, reader, a hearty farewell. May it be long 
before we meet again; never, I trust, in connection 
with any personal controversy. May we meet at last, 
and Mr. Newman with us, on those peaceful shores on 
which these storms never beat; where the “tented 
field” as well of hostile polemics as of hostile armies is 
unknown; where the weapons of “spiritual” as well 
as physical “ warfare” shall be beaten into implements 
of peace, —to gather in the eternal harvest of wisdom 
and joy and love. 

And now let me make one little request. I have 
been, as I think, rather injuriously assailed; and what 
is more, that which millions as well as myself deem 
most sacred has also been most injuriously assailed. 
If, in the heat of a necessarily hasty * composition, l 
have written anything which seems unworthy of the 
cause of Him whose claims I seek, however feebly, to 
advocate, then all I ask of you is, — Bz Jusr; lay the 
blame on me, and blame me as much as you will; but 
be just to Him who cannot be answerable for the offen- 
ces of his disciples, since, if they obeyed his precepts 
and imitated his example, they never could thus offend. 
And, at all events, believe this, — for it is the simple 
truth, — that if the thought of Him has not done all it 
ought, it has done something; I have suppressed many, 
as I think, most deserved sarcasms, which sprang into 
my mind in the ardor of composition, and have struck 
out many more which had flowed from my pen; and I 
have done both mainly from the recollection of Him. 


* The second edition of the “ Phases” appeared in August last. 


“Se ee 


APPENDIX. 


(Referred to at Note, p. 182.) 


Ir is well said by Hume, that “no priestly dogmas 
ever shocked common sense so much as the infinite di- 
visibility of matter, with its consequences.” He gives 
other examples of the similar insurmountable difficul- 
ties which beset us in every path of speculation. 

The true-mode of dealing with objections, merely, to 
any conclusion, is well expressed by the sagacious 
Locke, the careful study of whose great work would 
guard many a young intellect from the chief dangers 
of the present day. “ The way to find truth, as far as 
we are able to reach it in this our dark and short-sight- 
ed state, is to pursue the hypothesis that seems to us to 
carry with it the most light and consistenéy, as far as 
we can, without raising objections, or striking at those 
that come in our way, till we have carried our present 
principle as far as it will go, and given what light and 
strength we can to all the parts of it. And when that 
is done, then to take into our consideration any objec- 
tions that lie against it...... Such is the weakness of 
our understandings, that, unless where we have clear 
demonstration, we can scarce make out to ourselves 
any truth which will not be liable to some exception 
beyond our power wholly to clear it from; and there- 
fore, if upon that ground we are presently bound to 


x ® 
208 APPENDIX. 


give up our former opinion, we shall be in perpetual 
fluctuation, evéry day changing our minds, and passing 
from one side to another; we shall lose all stability of 
thought, and at last give up all probable truths as if 
there were no such thing, or, which is not much better, 
think it indifferent which side we take...... The com- 
parison of the evidence on both sides is the fairest way 
to search after truth, and the surest not to mistake on 
which side she is. There is scarce any controversy 
which is not a full instance of this, and if a man will 
embrace no opinion but what he can clear from all dif- 
ficulties, and remove all objections, I fear he will have 
but very narrow thoughts, and find very little that he 
shall assent to. “What, then, will you say, shall he em- 
brace that for truth which has improbabilities in it that 
he cannot master? This has a clear answer. In con- 
tradicting opinions, one must be true, that he cannot 
doubt: which, then, shall he take? That which is ac- 
companied with the greatest light and evidence, that 
which is freest from the grosser absurdities, though our 
narrow capacities cannot penetrate it on every side.” — 


Lord King’s Life of Locke, 4to, p. 316. 


Se 


On several of the important subjects touched in the 
present little volume, the reader will find much valuable 
matter in the Course of “Bampton Lectures” for the 


year 1852, by J. E. Riddle, M. A. 


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